


Devil's Cut

by sohardtosay



Series: Swan Song [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: (sort of), (what else is new), Blood and Gore, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Domestic, F/M, GTA!verse, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Child Abuse, Public Blow Jobs, Recreational Drug Use, Ryan the Sailor Mouth Guy, Sex on a Car, Sexual Tension, just guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 48,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4306053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sohardtosay/pseuds/sohardtosay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan Haywood is dangerous, and kind of beautiful, and basically the biggest fucking tease on Earth. There was never any question about that.</p>
<p>What Ray's wondering, really, is why the hell he let himself be alone with Ryan in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goin' Down Swingin'

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally PWP. Starts off kinda fluffy, then it's onto public blowjobs, confused Ray, Ryan the Big Fucking Tease Guy...welcome to part three, y'all.
> 
> (This takes place the morning after the ending of part II.)

Around nine, Ray wakes up to his doorbell ringing.

He’s going on five hours of sleep and zero caffeine as he stumbles to the door, his face prickly with cactus-needle stubble fighting for air along his jaw. It’s a wonder that he manages to get a clear, “Who is it?” out.

(It’s more like “ _Who’sit_ ” but whatever.)

A deep, pleasant voice singsongs, “Can Ray come out and _plaaaay_?”

Instant wake-up.

Ray yawns, loudly. “You’re knocking now? That’s not your style.”

“I like to keep things interesting. Now are you gonna let me in, or do I need to break in?”

“Again,” Ray says, swinging the door open. Ryan’s face is flushed from climbing the stairs and his arms are full of groceries. “You forget to mention that.”

“For what? The audience watching?”

Ray rolls his eyes, before uttering another loud yawn that borders on a scream. When Ryan slips past him, he smells sharply clean, his usual cut grass and ivory soap. “You stopping by to drop off your groceries?”

“Figured I’d share.” Ryan shrugs, and promptly switches gear. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Ray eyes Ryan, in khakis and a black shirt. Certified nerd dad by morning, bloodthirsty killer by...the rest of the time. “Better.”

Ryan nods once, an absent afterthought. “Good.” He dumps the bags on the counter, and before Ray can even react, pulls out a six-pack.

Coke bottles. Ray lets out an incredulous laugh. Fucker kept his word.

“Not diet?” Ray cracks. 

“That’s more my thing,” Ryan says, smiling and looking rather stunning. He’s sporting four days’ worth of stubble that makes his jaw look particularly handsome, and the black t-shirt is snug around his biceps and muscled back. Moms at the supermarket were probably swooning. 

“You know in that getup, you almost look…” Ryan glances back at him, but Ray can only shrug. “I dunno. Normal.”

Ryan makes a face. “Really? That’s misleading.”

Ray chuckles, stunned—thieving gangster mass murderers talking groceries. Los Santos would lose its shit.

They could be together.

Ray’s head spins. Are they? A couple? Not that he’s speaking from a ton of experience, but he’s pretty sure most couples don’t get together after something like last night—

God.

_Last night._

“Ryan.”

“Yes, Ray?”

The only that stops Ray from belting out a very _Lifetime_ movie _WHAT ARE WE_ is the sight of bagels, which Ryan pulls out of a brown paper bag.

Ray stops, disbelieving. “You...bought me breakfast.”

“I did,” Ryan confirms. His smile, if Ray didn’t know better, could almost be mistaken for shy. “You want?”

“Dude—do I _ever_.”

Ryan beams. For a ruthless murderer, he’s kind of a huge dork.

Ray sits at the counter while Ryan preps a pot of coffee. “You want?”

“Nah. Too bitter for my delicate taste buds.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Ryan rifles through the cloth shopping bag, and _oh no he didn’t_ , Ray thinks, until Ryan resurfaces and, yes—

“Oh my God,” Ray says. Ryan’s mouth spreads into a ridiculous smile. “ _Really?_ ”

“What can I say? I was thinking about you.”

“Weirdo,” Ray huffs good-naturedly, cracking the tab on the Monster. “You do realize that this is domestic as fuck.”

“Considering we slaughter people for a living, don’t we deserve domestic as fuck on occasions?”

“Hell no. Geoff did domestic as fuck for nine years, and look where that shit got him.”

Ryan frowns. “He was married?” The coffeemaker gives a loud click, and he takes out the pot.

It’s the definition of irony when Ray’s eyes flit to Ryan’s hand and catch sight of his wedding band. 

“He was,” Ray affirms. “Michael’s married, too, but who knows how long that shit’ll float. In our world? Any and all connection is fucking _doomed_.”

Ryan cracks a smile. “Even the R&R Connection?”

“Exception to the rule.”

Ryan chuckles, pouring himself a mug. He climbs onto the stool beside Ray as Ray says, “How long were you married again?”

“Oh, nine or ten months.”

“You guys ever get domestic?”

Ryan shrugs. “Not really.”

He reaches for the paper bag, and Ray knows immediately that that conversation is over just by the subtle fall of Ryan’s face. A curtain closing. Interesting.

“You really don’t like to talk about yourself, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Ray raises his brows. “So that story about your wife was…”

Ryan’s smile is two-parts guilty and two-parts not-sorry-at-all. “An attempt to freak you out.”

“Well, it fucking worked.”

Ryan chuckles, taking another sip of coffee. It’s completely black. Italian roast. Ray shudders at the thought.

He clears his throat. “I know you don’t like to talk about yourself...”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you’re not a ghoul by any chance, are you?”

Ryan eyes him; the mug is still raised to his lips, but can’t disguise his smirk. “I don’t think so?”

“It’s just—you don’t eat. Like, ever.” Ray shrugs. “Just saying.”

Ryan barks out a laugh. He also sets the cup down and reaches for a poppy seed bagel, and Ray makes a big show of sighing, very _Oh, thank God_. It makes Ryan’s eyes glow.

“I just realized, Ryan.”

Ryan drops both halves of his bagel into the toaster. “Yeah?”

Ray smiles weakly. “We never told each other one secret.”

Ryan smiles, too. “Circumstances got in the way.”

“I have one.”

“Go ahead.”

“And it’s a good one,” Ray adds, “so don’t pussy out on me and tell me something like ‘when I was little I accidentally let my fish die’ or something.”

“You think _any_ secret I could possibly possess would be _that_ vanilla?”

“...Point taken,” Ray says after a moment, which makes Ryan let out a lovely laugh. No backing out now.

“I was in love once.”

Ryan blinks. “Just once?”

“Just once.” Ray doesn’t look at him. “A long time ago.”

“Who with?”

But Ray just shakes his head, and Ryan backs off. 

“It fucked me up.”

“It’s not love if it doesn’t.”

“She didn’t love me back, I think,” Ray says, tearing off a chunk from his bagel. “I never asked. All I know is it completely ruined me.”

“Would it have mattered?” Ryan asks slowly; his eyes follow Ray’s slow, deliberate mastication of his breakfast. “If she loved you back?”

“No,” Ray says immediately. Ryan nods, as if satisfied.

“What happened to her?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Ray drops the half-bagel and pushes away the plate. “I don’t think I can eat this.”

Ryan takes it. “That’s fine. I’m still hungry.”

“You know, you’re suddenly eating a _lot_ of calories for someone who isn’t trying to disguise the fact that he isn’t a ghoul.”

“Ray,” Ryan mock-huffs, “for fuck’s sake. I eat candy all the time.”

“ _I still have my suspicions._ ”

Ryan laughs again. He has a unicorn laugh that is so dangerously nice to hear.

Ray pauses—it feels good, but he can’t let Ryan distract him. Not now. Because this is what always happens. He’ll start to talk about it, then promptly forget. And he _needs_ to finish.

“That was the only time I opened my heart to someone and they ruined me for it.”

“Mmm.” It’s not dismissive, more a noise of conformation, as Ryan spreads cream cheese.

“I couldn’t trust people after that. Still don’t. I just fucking shut everyone out.”

“How old were you?”

“Too young.”

Ryan chuckles dryly at that. “You’re always too young to have your heart broken.” He bites into the bagel.

Ray sits back on his stool. Fine. “I was sixteen.”

Ryan nods again.

“She knew me. Not better than anyone, but she still knew a whole hell of a lot than most. I told her things I’d never told a single soul.” Reading Ryan’s mind, Ray adds, “Even the cutting.”

“Who was she to you?” Ryan asks.

“An escape,” Ray replies. “A chance to finally be normal.”

“Do you think, if you’d settled down with this girl, you would have led a ‘normal’ life? Wife, kids, corporate job, all that?”

Ray doesn’t even hesitate: “No.”

Ryan has the grace to smile. It makes the knot in Ray’s gut loosen an inch.

He could give Ryan the fucking world.

“That’s big, Ray,” Ryan says softly. “Huge.”

Ray nods.

“I’ll have to match that.”

He shrugs. “Do whatever you want, man.”

“Okay.” Ryan kicks his legs a bit, thinking. He has a bit of cream cheese at the corner of is mouth that he dashes away. “Sometimes, I scare myself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that’s my secret.” Ryan is still smiling, but there’s a remarkable sadness now stretched out behind his dark blue eyes. “Sometimes, I really, really scare myself.”

Ray thinks of saying, _I’m not surprised._ But he could never be that cruel.

“When I’m, as you say, ‘sporting a chub’ after I murder someone, there’s always this part of me that’s so fucking _terrified_. I mean, I know I’m not normal, but you were right.” Ryan looks Ray in the eye and holds him there. His voice teases along Ray’s skin.

“I like to kill, Ray. I _love_ to kill. That’s definitely no secret. But, when I’m...in that space, I get scared. I go crazy and I can’t stop myself.”

Ray has never had a moment of eye contact this intense. _Ever._

“Do you want to stop?” he whispers.

And there’s no name for the _look_ that overcomes Ryan’s face in that moment, so foreign to his face that Ray almost doesn’t recognize it. Then it hits him:

_Vulnerable._

Ryan Haywood looks vulnerable.

“I do,” he says quietly, “and I don’t.”

“Have you always...been like that?”

“Even when I was a kid.”

“I don’t understand,” Ray says, frowning. “You told me about this a while ago and you were acting like it was the greatest shit in the world.”

Ryan laughs sadly. “I’d like to think we’re better friends now.”

Ray exhales. “Me, too.”

It’s the first Ray’s ever admitted anything close to affection for Ryan. And it doesn’t taste so bad in his mouth.

“That girl, Ray,” Ryan says quietly, “she can never hurt you again if you don’t let her.”

Ray utters a sound that couldn’t even pass for a chuckle. “It’s a little too late for that, Ryan.”

“No, it isn’t. Do you want to let her go?”

“Yes.”

“Then do.” Ryan’s voice is a breath. “Starting today.”

“You don’t get it,” Ray mutters.

“What don’t I get, Ray? What it’s like to fall in love?” Ryan meets Ray’s gaze, back to his old self. “Or what it’s like to be hurt so badly that you try to hide? You think I don’t get that?”

Ray doesn’t really have the heart to answer either way. 

“And,” Ryan continues, “for what it’s worth—I’m sorry.”

Ray grits his jaw. “I don’t really wanna talk about it anymore, Ryan.”

Damnit. His voice is more choked-up than he intends, but Ryan just nods and moves along. He doesn’t even hesitate. Ray kind of loves him for that.

“Hopefully,” Ryan says, “that was more engaging than ‘I let my fish die’?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“To be fair, I’ve never had a fish, or any pet.” He smirks. “Probably better that way.”

Ray laughs uncommittedly, circling an uncertain finger around the rim of his Monster can. It feels ice cold on his heated flesh.

Ryan dabs his mouth with a napkin, and, if Ray didn’t know he was an experienced serial killer, he could almost be _dainty_. “What’s on your mind?”

Ray deliberates. It makes him frown. 

“I need to be honest with you, Ryan.”

“I would hope so.”

Ray swallows, which makes him realize that he’s actually kind of _nervous. So_ not what he was expecting.

“We’re friends. Okay?”

He says it too slowly to be casual, but Ryan’s face doesn’t budge an inch. “Of course.”

“Just friends,” Ray emphasizes, “right?”

“Right.” Ryan smiles oddly, head tilted—like Ray’s being the weird one. He puts the poppyseed, done in the toaster, on his plate and butters it while Ray just sort of sits there. 

“It’s just—yesterday, I thought—”

He thought it meant something. He thought it made them more than—well. Not friends, but more than whatever the hell they are now. He thought it changed things. But Ryan glances at him, and suddenly the words on Ray’s tongue just flub and die.

“I don’t know,” he manages. “I don’t know what I thought.” Which isn’t exactly a lie.

Ryan, at least, has the mercy to let it go. Ray’s apartment is horribly quiet, being so high above the city, and he’s always been somewhat unnerved by the silence. Sometimes he has to turn a fan on just so he has some white noise.

But with Ryan next to him, it’s almost comfortable. He could almost get used to it. 

“I was thinking,” Ryan says after a bit, “maybe we could see a movie today.”

Ray snorts. “Talk about domestic.”

“Oh, Ray—I’m starting to get so domestic I feel like I should open up a 401k.”

“Oh shit, Ryan, I just realized I completely forgot the kids had a soccer game at nine.”

Ryan utters an offended sound. “Well, luckily for you, at least _one_ of us remembers things on occasion, and has already taken them in the minivan.”

——

The theater downtown is moderately busy, swarming with kids on summer break, their disgruntled parents, teenagers on their phones, and tourists in giant sunglasses and cargo shorts. Too normal for two off-the-clock gangsters and murderers to walk in like they belong—yet here they are.

“I used to see movies a lot,” Ray remarks pre-credits. The ride over was mostly silent, and the only thing Ryan’s said is the time and movie they wanted to see to the girl at the ticket counter (who was red in the face and giving him bedroom eyes.)

Ryan glances at him. “Oh yeah?”

He has his phone out, the screen glowing a harsh snowstorm white in the dark. Ray catches a glance of his home screen.

“People text you?”

“You and Geoff, mostly,” Ryan says mildly. “Do I look like a social butterfly?”

“Depends.” Ray leans back in his seat. They’re all the way at the top. “Do butterflies have a habit of cannibalizing other butterflies?”

“Ray, I may be a lot of things, but a _cannibal._ Really.”

“You better fucking believe it.” Ray stretches. 

Ryan sighs. “So.”

“So.”

Ryan’s lower lip quivers, the way it does when he’s holding back a laugh. “You were saying something before you accused me of being Hannibal.”

“Oh,” Ray says, “movies. Yeah. I used to watch them a lot when I was younger. Living on my own. It was something to do so I used to go to matinees up in San Andreas pretty much every day.”

“Living on your own?”

“Yep. I was eighteen.”

“That’s young.”

Ray shrugs. His mouth has filled with dark, bitter realization that keeps him from opening it again. 

Ryan turns to him, face open and questioning, but he knows better than to ask when Ray falls shut with a dogged silence. Ray reaches for the giant perspiring soda between them at the same time as Ryan, and his hand leaps back at the spark of electricity.

“Oops,” Ryan says. Ice sloshes around in the cup as he takes a sip. “My bad.”

Ray grunts. “Whatever.”

The credits start. The movie’s another Bond film—Ryan had to explain to Ray that they were based off of a book series, to which Ray indignantly yelled “ _How old did this dude have to be to write this many books holy fuck is he the oldest person alive_ ”—and the trailers reflect explosions, guns, dynamic camerawork, big-name actors, and at least one panty shot per film. 

“Our lives on-screen,” Ryan murmurs. Ray snorts, but it’s absent.

He’s still reeling from before. It would be dangerous territory to let Ryan into that part of his life, or anyone, and he almost traipsed right into it without second thought. Ryan makes him sloppy. Makes it easier to just not think.

When the movie starts, Ray’s startled as Ryan puts an arm around the back of his chair. The gesture is casual at a distance—a product of stretching—and very dude-on-a-first-date-trying-to-put-his-arm-around-the-girl. Nice.

“What are you doing?” Ray breathes out. Face illuminated by the movie screen, Ryan smiles.

“Just being _friendly._ ”

Oh God.

“This better not be like that revenge you fucking took on me when you wouldn’t let me kill anyone.”

“Revenge?” Ryan’s eyes are wide. “Ray, you wound me. I was merely trying to carry out my Safety Buddy duties.”

“I hate you,” Ray mutters, slumping low in his seat. Ryan’s arm is creating an annoying heat along the back of his neck that he’d rather ignore. “And if you try anything else, I’m moving.”

The woman in front of them shushes them.

“Fuck you,” Ryan calmly clips. Scowling, she stands and makes a show of moving out to the edge of the aisle.

“You’re gonna get us fucking kicked out,” Ray says, quieter.

“Like fuck I am.”

“Ryan, all I’m saying is—”

“Ooh, this is the best part.” Ryan turns back to the screen. Not that he’d even fucking know that, considering this is the first time they’ve seen this. But Ray keeps his mouth shut.

He hates to admit it, but he’s actually kind of relaxed. He and Ryan have been marathoning the shit out of Left 4 Dead 2 and Halo these last couple of weeks—and, it’s kind of remarkable how _normal_ it feels to just go to the movies again. Like, it’s not something high-profile gangsters do (probably.) It’s something normal, everyday, not-trained-killers do on their days off and on Friday nights. It makes Ray feel like he doesn’t rob banks or headshot people from skyscrapers to earn a living. And it’s kind of a pipe dream, but he _deserves_ to dream once in a fucking while, goddamnit. Bullets and blood and Geoff be damned.

(Yeah. Fucking. _Right._ )

Approximately fifteen seconds after he starts to relax, Ryan ebbs at the corner of his vision. Not that Ray’s looking at him—Ryan leans forward so he’s positioned in a way that even Ray’s shitty-ass peripherals can’t _not_ notice him. He’s still watching the movie, but his hand is on the armrest, fingers dripping off. Down toward Ray’s leg.

In a slow, deliberate move, he slips his arm off and inches toward the edge of Ray’s shirt.

Ray stares, bewildered, until Ryan’s fingertips hook beneath the hem. 

“Ryan,” he says hoarsely.

Ryan doesn’t reply, eyes facing the screen. Ray wills his hands to swat Ryan away, or for him to, like, fucking _resist_ , maybe?? But he’s frozen. 

Not even ten seconds later, Ryan has his hand fully trussed up Ray’s shirt and is stroking him like he’s trying to commit Ray to memory. And this is not like last night, when Ray was emotional and terrified and Ryan was gentle and curious and maybe _concerned_ just a tiny bit, about as much as he could manage. This is _sexual._ His fingers _play_ Ryan’s flesh, brushing past his nipples and making them pretty hard pretty damn quick, up toward his neck which hums at the touch. Each sweep of Ryan’s calloused fingers on Ray’s scars feels like a lightning strike, and he’s left breathless and finds himself involuntarily pushing his body forward into Ryan’s hand. He fruitlessly tries to maintain focus on the CGI explosion sequence in front of him, but that’s better said than done with Ryan’s hand all over him. 

“Ryan,” he tries again, in a whisper.

“Hmm.” Ryan’s fingers casually slip from Ray’s shirt to his lap, where he’s half-hard and very much not prepared for the pressure of Ryan’s fingertips.

All the breath leaves his lungs. “Ry—”

“You’re sensitive,” Ryan remarks quietly. “I like that.”

“The movie—”

“I know. I’m watching.” Ryan makes a point of laughing with everyone else when the main character epically fucks up onscreen. “I gotta say though, Ray, is this really spank bank material? Learn to control yourself man, honestly.”

“ _Asshole_ ,” Ray snarls, but it’s half-hearted at best and comes out breathy. Ryan’s smile is serene.

“Oops.” He knocks some popcorn onto the ground, right at Ray’s feet. “Darn. I’ll get that.”

Then he gets down onto the ground. On his knees. In front of Ray.

When their eyes meet, Ray stops breathing.

“Ryan.”

Without speaking or looking away, Ryan lifts his hands up to the apex of Ray’s legs. The quiet sound of his zipper sounds positively _vulgar_.

“Oops,” Ryan says again, quiet and long and slow. 

Ray understands, so swiftly that he sees stars:

Ryan’s hand? Merely a test. And _Ray failed._

Ray rips his eyes away, desperately bobbing among the other moviegoers. No one’s in their row, and they’re all the way at the top.

“Lift your hips,” Ryan orders softly.

Ray trembles. “This is fucking—”

“Push me away if you don’t want it,” Ryan says, eyes locked on Ray’s face. “Otherwise, lift your hips.”

And Ray must be out of his mind, because he _actually does._

Oh God, how he hates himself. How he hates hates _hates_ himself, for knowing that this was probably the plan from the jump and he’s just _sitting_ here, just playing into it. Just... _letting_ Ryan get away with it.

Ray’s shorts and boxers pool around his feet just as Ryan begins mouthing a slow, delectable line up his inner thigh and it’s fucking electric, making Ray’s lungs empty a second time. In a panic, he tries to squeeze his legs shut, but Ryan, _of course_ , is perfectly in-tune and anchors his hands on Ray’s thighs to keep them spread. His mouth is absolute fire on Ray’s skin and it’s not like before. Not like his hands, or his eyes. This is lava—this is the surface of the goddamn _sun_ , compared to that.

Holy _shit._

He takes his time, a slow assault that has Ray clutching the armrests for dear life, his head back against the chair because seriously just fuck everyone else, he’s about to let some mass murderer give him head in a public movie theatre and he doesn’t give a single _fuck._ His senses, his mind, his entire fucking _being_ is concentrated on the feathery kisses Ryan’s peppering all along the inside of his thighs, so close to Ray’s cock that he can actually feel Ryan’s hair brushing along the hypersensitive skin. It’s hot as hell and frustrating as all fuck, all at once.

If Ray wasn’t such a gentleman, he’d tangle his fingers in that hair and just shove Ryan’s head between his legs. Fuck. Fucking shit. He wants it. He wants to come in Ryan’s infuriatingly talented mouth. 

Ryan makes a careful, deliberate circle around the base of Ray’s dick that pushes a shaky, startled breath from Ray’s mouth. The teasing has left him _achingly_ hard, and he lets out a sound that’s so broken and desperate when he feels Ryan’s tongue that he actually has to clap his hands in front of his mouth. He might have a movie score and surround-sound to compete with, but the way things are going, he’d probably win.

They’re making eye contact when Ryan’s mouth finally wraps around Ray’s cock.

Ray can hardly remind himself, through his fog, to just fucking _breathe._ Breathe. Don’t _die_ with your dick in Ryan’s mouth, for God’s sake. And especially don’t try to commit the image of Ryan’s lips swallowing up your cock to memory (too fucking late, but one can still hope.) Ryan bobs his head back and forth tentatively, taking it all down so easily it makes Ray’s head spin. Ryan’s tongue holy _shit_ his fucking tongue, it’s smooth and hot as it slides along the under of Ray’s length and let it be known that Ray is undone just by the way Ryan laps along the hot, velvety skin, amen.

Onscreen, a beautiful McLaren F1 coasts along a California highway.; the music’s calmer. Shit has transpired. And Ray has no idea how it got there or what the plot even is or _where_ he is or just fucking _what._

Ryan maintains the slow, maddening rhythm that Ray’s so into that he can’t even be _frustrated_ it’s just _that fucking good_ , and it’s not until he rocks his hips up to meet Ryan’s mouth that Ryan speeds up, and it sends Ray into a tailspin. Ryan is swallowing down every inch of him, his throat fluttering around Ray’s dick in a way that hits Ray so hard, he almost can’t bite his tongue fast enough. And oh shit, it’s nearly code-red when Ryan slides all the way to the tip, the flat of his tongue pressing up against Ray’s head and in full view of Ray, who nearly lets out this _moan_ —

Ryan sits up abruptly, nose-to-nose with Ray.

Pure fucking _heart attack._

“You’re gonna need to be quiet,” Ryan says huskily, and his voice is so very hot, and Ray is so very hot, and all of it is just this maddening, unbearable _heat._

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Ray grits out through stuttered, uneven breaths. Ryan’s smile is very cat-ate-the-canary.

“I’m trying.”

Then he dives between Ray’s legs, and it’s Ray’s last ounce of willpower not to unleash a fullblown porno soundtrack. He’s not vocal in bed (or at all, really), but _holy. FUCK._

Out on the stairs, a man is climbing up and Ray almost reaches to Ryan’s shoulder, until the guy chooses a seat two aisles down. And oh _God_ Ryan is doing the most delectable twists with his tongue that Ray doesn’t even fucking know if he’d stop Ryan at this point, even with someone in full view.

Whatever Bond was doing, it’s gotten him (yet again) laid as the sounds of heavy breathing fills the surround-sound. A no-name woman is in panties and a bra, but Ray’s eyes are pinned to Ryan’s, even when heat erupts in his hips and he starts to jerk and he knows he’s about to come. Even then, Ryan staring up at him with Ray’s cock in his mouth is the hottest sight he’s ever fucking seen.

Right when Ray’s orgasm hits, Ryan opens his mouth so Ray watches his release hit Ryan’s tongue. It makes his head fall completely slack. Death, then rebirth, then fucking death again. 

He will never get that image of out his head. Never. _Never._

Coolly, Ryan swallows and pulls Ray’s shorts back up, zipping them up and buckling his belt. Ray’s still floating somewhere, possibly comatose, so the ever-opportunistic Ryan leans in and kisses his cheek.

A deranged psychopath and he turns out to be the girl who makes the bed after a one-night stand. What a doll.

As Ray’s coming down—which is a little like climbing back down from a fucking mountain—Ryan stands. His eyes glitter from the changing picture on the screen.

“Bathroom,” he whispers.

And oh, how a promise lies there. What a pretty, enticing trap he’s laid.

Panting, Ray nods. Ryan leans so close that there’s no way he couldn’t be about to kiss Ray, and Ray’s doesn’t even fucking turn his head away, his mouth slack and waiting.

And _wanting._

But Ryan denies him again, the fucking tease—he stops inches before Ray’s parted lips, his own pulled back into a pleased smile. They’re still wet with Ray’s cum, and it turns Ray on so much to see it that he actually pisses himself off.

“I’ll never get the taste of you out of my head.”

Oh.

Ryan thumbs Ray’s lower lip open and nips it between his teeth before he turns toward the stairs, and they transcend the line between teasing and fucking _torturing._

Head spinning, Ray watches him go until he disappears around the corner. This is it. Every exhausted inch of him prickles with need—need for Ryan. He craves him more than he craves his next breath. It’s so intense, his body can hardly bear the weight of it.

Ray rises on shaking legs. He’s down the stairs and emerging into the bright lobby before he can even comprehend it. Headed for the bathroom.

This is his body on autopilot. Seeking Ryan out. Always always always.

Addiction. That was this damning itch is. Ray’s fucking addicted, and all it took was _one fucking hit._ Sure, they’ve been dancing around it for months now, but Ryan just gave Ray the most incredible fifteen minutes of his entire life—and he knows that’s it. He’s hooked, just like with the knife. Just like with everything Ray’s ever touched that’s made him feel alive, even for one second. And Ryan doesn’t make Ray feel alive—he makes Ray feel like he’s in a freefall, like he’s above the clouds and plummeting for Earth. Like his heart’s in his throat and he can’t move.

He stares at the bathroom door. He knows, if he goes in there, it’s over. The place is huge and virtually empty as is, in that transition where all the good movies are playing and the next show times aren’t for another two hours—there’s a good chance of no one being in there. And there’s an even better chance that what happened back in the theatre will be PG. 

Ray stands there for what could easily be a decade. 

If he goes in there…

He’s just starting to move forward when abruptly his entire body jerks away, toward the parking lot and the exit doors.

The car’s unlocked, so he sits in the passenger seat. And it’s only when he’s completely still that he realizes he’s shaking.

——

Eventually, Ryan emerges.

Ray avoids him as he climbs into the driver’s side, doggedly staring at the glove compartment. It’s been well over twenty minutes and the car’s grown unbearably hot in the Southern California heat, but he’s still curled up and in his hoodie, windows shut. It feels good to be uncomfortable. It keeps him occupied.

Ryan draws in a breath like he’s about to speak, but Ray knows he won’t—and he doesn’t, blowing it back out and starting the car. 

They don’t talk, but the drive back isn’t far. It isn’t until they hit the highway that Ray dares to open his mouth, though:

“Let’s get one thing clear.”

“Okay.”

“Whatever just happened back there? Didn’t.”

Ryan just lets out a short laugh, but says nothing. Ray stares out the window for the rest of the ride.

——

When Ryan drops him off, he goes, “Just tell me this, Ray: how long do you plan to dance around this? I just wanna make sure I know so I can still make plans.”

In response, Ray slams the door.


	2. Brick Walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary? Did you mean: literally just a night out drinking with the Crew? (probably not tbh)
> 
> God...so, leave it to me to take roughly fourteen pages of nonsensical babble before I introduce a character. Yeah. *ONE* character. I kind of flesh this one out, so stick with me. I want to establish the friendship, banter, and camaraderie that's present among the Crew before shit goes south--which it will, believe me on that.
> 
> Another note: I LOVE all the feedback I've been getting, on all three segments of this story! Seriously, you guys are fucking amazing and I'm INSANELY humbled.

The next time he sees Ryan, the Crew goes out for drinks.

He takes the bus, because there’s no way he’s asking for a ride, even if Team Nice Dynamite graciously offers over text (there’s only so much of them he can take even when he’s _not_ reeling from what happened with Ryan.) And maybe he regrets it a little, but only because a man in a sundress keeps trying to talk to the dog that the woman next to him is holding, and a girl with long green hair asks Ray if he works at a downtown strip club because he “looks familiar.” Longest ride in history.

Michael and Gavin are already bev’d up and chatting loudly when Ray walks in. Gavin sets his beer down rather forcefully, sending a spectacular arc of froth straight up. It splashes on the sleeve of Michael’s expensive-as-all-shit jacket, for which he shoves Gav with considerable strength. Gavin starts squeaking when his stool rocks, and Michael is cackling as he anchors his hands to it to keep it steady. 

Simultaneously, they lean into each other and hold it there.

Ray feels paranoia donkey-kick his heart. For what it’s worth, he predicted them from day one. Gavin, a smart guy if you got down to it, remains a world class word-flubber, and Michael’s the only one who not only understands him perfectly, but can _tolerate_ it, trumping Geoff by a considerable amount (especially considering the latter’s been in Gavin’s life for thirteen years.) When it got down to it, the chemistry between the two of them was as magnetic as it was bizarre—on the surface, they were total opposites. On the surface, Jersey boy Michael should have hated Gavin’s British guts, or vice versa. But, the truth of it was, they were the same crazy, extreme, explosive-setting person.

Michael puts an arm around Gavin’s shoulder, closing the space between them completely, and they’re both taking a drink like they’re completely oblivious to the affection behind the gesture (or the somewhat disgusted look on the homophobic bartender’s face.) Ray can’t help but feel he noticed—that he’s oversensitive to it—because of Ryan. Because of the movie theatre.

Because they were almost, dangerously, deliriously close to being a couple.

Ray feels like thumping his head on a wall. Oh God. Ryan. He’ll be here any minute. The execution is minutes away.

After Ray all but sprinted from Ryan’s car after the movies, Ryan texted him the next day: _I can be patient ;)_ Ray more or less felt like ripping his own tongue out. Ryan could definitely be patient, if he’d held out this long.

“Ray!” Gavin chirrups drunkenly. His green eyes are as glassy as a doll’s. “How’s my favorite sniper?”

“Peaches.” Ray signals the bartender. “Can I get an ice water?”

The bartender lifts an eyebrow, shoots at glance at still-embracing Michael and Gavin, and nods. 

They’re physically affectionate normally, but drunk, they can get kind of frisky—on Gavin’s twenty-fifth birthday, a shitfaced Michael was almost aggressively insistent on being the one who spanked him—and all of a sudden Gavin drops his head on Michael’s shoulder. The squeeze Michael gives Gavin does not go unnoticed in the slightest.

Ray would know if they were dating. Right? And isn’t Michael married??

“Why do you come with, Ray?” Gav asks, more random than ever when he’s had some bevs. “If you don’t drink?”

“Because I’m nice like that.”

“Suit yourself,” Michael says. Ray watches the foamy bubbles in Michael’s beer ascend.

They’re interrupted by a woman, their age, hair a dark, bloody crimson like red velvet cupcakes that falls fashionably around her pleasant face. Her eyes are pale green, and fixed on Michael. She smiles.

“Lindsay,” Gavin says.

“Hey, Gav.” She gives Michael a kiss and sits beside him. In her right hand, she’s carrying a briefcase that she sets on the floor beside her stool. The bar is a seedy, dimly-lit contrast to her sharp, pressed suit. Ray recalls: Michael’s wife is a lawyer. Burnie Burns’ brainchild, if he’s not mistaken. How they might have met becomes less of a mystery.

Ray notes that Michael does not drop his arm from Gavin’s shoulders, and Gavin’s still got his head rested as he raises a straw to his lips.

There isn’t a hint of disappointment, disgust, or anger in Lindsay’s expression at that.

She nods to Ray, not unkindly. “Ray.”

Ray nods back. “Linds.”

He knows of her more than he actually _knows_ her. Michael won’t shut up about her, and she’s on both his lock and home screen background, but he never brings her to group functions. Maybe once or twice. As far as Ray knows, she knows about the Crew (who doesn't?) and lets Michael do his thing while she does hers.

Lindsay stands to go answer her phone, and by now, during each pause, Michael and Gavin have both been giving him looks that they’re not expecting him to notice, so Ray sighs heavily. “Yes?”

“What?”

“What’s with the…” Ray throws up his hand in a vague gesture. “The look? Do I have something on my face? A third head?”

“No,” Gavin says at about the same time Michael says, “We’re—” Then they both jerk to a stop, looking at each other. It looks Nicholas Sparks as all fuck with Gavin leaning on Michael.

Ray shakes his head.

“I think he should know, Gavvy.”

“ _No_ ,” Gavin squawks, which sounds a bit like “nah-oh” in his accent. “That’s _indecent_ , Michael.”

“What is it?” Ray says. 

Michael looks at him. “Gavin and I are placing bets.”

“Michael,” Gav whines, moving so he’s finally sitting back up, “for Christ’s sake—”

“Come to think of it, Geoff probably is, too. He definitely is. Right, Gav? You’ve seen the way he fucking—”

“Oh, _can_ it,” Gavin snips, and Michael grins. “Lord. You loud-mouthed bastard.”

“Okay,” Ray says, “I’m about five inches from snapping both of your fucking necks, _what the fuck is it._ ”

“We’re placing bets on how soon R&R becomes a thing” Michael says, practically spitting it out on the table. “Like, officially.”

“A headliner thing, if you will,” Gavin says.

“Thank you, Gav.”

Ray furrows his brow. “The fuck? Are you two drunk already?”

“How Ryan’s been looking at you like he wants to put you between two pieces of bread and have you for lunch,” Gavin clarifies. “ _That_ sort of thing.”

Oh.

Michael’s grinning, so damn proud of himself. “Not without mayo, granted.”

“Oh, _Michael._ ” Gavin flinches. “ _Ew._ ”

Ray just stares at the two of them in utter shock—they don’t even have the grace to look _ashamed._

“So...you, like—okay, so, to get this straight, I’ve never dated or even liked a guy in my entire life, and because some giant creepy psycho likes to stare at me, you’re putting money how soon he gets in my pants. Is that right?”

“More or less,” Michael says matter-of-factly.

...Well okay, then.

“It’s more like,” Gavin says, “how some giant creepy psycho likes to stare at you while you stare back and they could make a second _Titanic_ out of it.”

“UST,” Michael offers, ignorant to how Ray is literally _boiling_ across from him. “How it’s all very ‘ _just kiss already._ ’ I’ve got twenty in.”

“Same with me.”

Ray just... _looks_ at them. Because there’s nothing he can even really fucking _say_. Is there? Is there a “How To” video on What to Say When Your Friends Betray You (But Not Really)??

“I’m straight,” he deadpans uselessly.

Cheerful, Michael says, “That never stopped anyone.” And God. _If only they knew._

Most straight people don’t let people of the same sex give them head at the movies—most that Ray knew of, anyways.

So, what did that make him? Bi? He still liked girls and, as far as he knew, he wasn’t eyeballing any dudes (okay, _maybe_ Ryan, maybe like, _once_ ). So, like...straight with an exception? Straight, asterisk? 

“You two are seriously the worst fucking friends ever. You know that?”

Team Nice Dynamite lets out a collective, _oh-classic-vinegary-Ray_ guffaw, which jump-starts the fire in Ray’s blood.

_And lately, only Ryan seems to d—_

He stomps on the thought like a bug.

“I’m fucking _serious_ ,” he says, and they’re a little too drunk to hear the edge in his voice right away. “How would _you_ feel if I started betting with Jack or something on how soon you two are gonna fuck?”

“Ray,” Michael snorts, “why would we _care_?”

“Yeah, dude,” Gavin chirps. “Relax. We’re just messing with you.”

“About being serious, anyways. The money’s very real.”

“So, what you’re saying is you actually are being very serious after all,” Ray says flatly.

Michael gives a guilty smile. “Never quite seen two people eyefuck the way you and Ryan do. And I’m fucking _married_.”

Ray just sits back in his chair, spent, because the day he gets through to these two morons is the day Hell freezes over, or Ryan stops ripping Ray’s clothes off with his eyes, or fucking...Geoff stays sober for seventy-two hours. _Something._

“I kind of hate you. Just FYI.”

“Don’t blame you,” Lindsay says, plopping back down beside Michael. She mouths _martini_ to the bartender, who nods sharply. “Like, whatever you’re thinking of hating them for.”

Michael’s smile is just this side of proud.

“That’s calm,” Gavin remarks, taking a content drink.

Michael furrows his brow. “‘That’s _calm_ ’?” he says. “The fuck is that Eurotrash idiosyncrasy?”

Gavin squawks, clearly alarmed. “Since when do you know such big words, Michael!?”

“That’s not even the correct usage of ‘idiosyncrasy,’” Ryan’s baritone interrupts suddenly, “but alright.”

“ _RYAN_ ,” TND brokenly wails. 

Ryan rolls his eyes and climbs onto the barstool beside Lindsay. Three whole seats over from Ray. What the fuck ever.

Ryan’s freshly-showered and his face is soft in this lightning and he has stubble attractively sloping his jaw. From the side, Ray notices for the first time just how long his eyelashes are.

What. The fuck. _Ever._

“Since when am I your best friend?” Ryan says.

“Since you became the Unofficial Weed Man,” Michael says. He extends a greedy hand.

“Nope. Get your own.”

“ _I’ll tell Dad_ ’,” Gavin threatens squeakily, but Geoff is talking with Jack across the crowded bar, so Gav adds: “...eventually.”

Ryan chuckles. “Whatever you say.” He glances at Ray, looking right into his eye, as he speaks, and Ray wrenches away and wills himself to disappear.

“Ryan,” Michael says, “you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting my wife, Lindsay.”

“Ah. Would this be her?”

Lindsay offers a hand to shake his. Her face registers mild surprise when his big hand closes around hers. Ray can’t translate it. 

“Nice to meet you,” she says politely. What is that in her voice? Hesitation?

Ryan’s all charm with a cool smile. “Pleasure.”

Geoff comes up to the bar and gets a whiskey on the rocks while Jack has a pilsner. It’s been nearly a week since Ray’s seen Geoff—the week was mostly smaller jobs, securing buyers and suppliers and cutting out some middlemen—so he actually smiles when Geoff claps him on the back. For what’s it worth, Geoff’s a pretty good boss for their fucked-up little family.

“Ray, my boy—how are you?”

“Been alright.”

“Your performance in the office has been excellent lately,” Geoff remarks, sliding his whiskey Ray’s way. “On the house.”

Ray just perks a brow: _not clever._

“No? Oh, you insist that I drink it? _All_ of it?” Geoff touches his heart. “ _Ray_ , you’re a martyr. God bless ya.”

Jack sends Ray an apologetic look. “A year later and he still thinks that joke is funny.”

“Gavin’s rubbing off on him,” Ray says dryly.

“Aw, Ray,” Gavin complains. 

“Look over here,” Geoff says. He gets whiskey droplets in his mustache. “Fucking Ryan the Weed Guy.”

Ryan sighs dramatically at the nickname—God help them if they can remember the origin of Ryan the Blank Guy. “Well, when you’re sober as a judge, Geoff…”

“Which he never is,” Jack butts in. “Ever.” Geoff just nods, affirming, and plunks his empty glass back down on the bar.

“You don’t drink?” Lindsay asks conversationally. Without looking, she drops the martini olive into Michael’s outstretched hand, and Ray feels a blindingly indescribable jealousy at the familiarity of the action.

Ryan shrugs. He has a peculiar look on his face whenever he looks at her, almost like he doesn’t know what to make of her. She seems almost unnerved by looking at him. It’s all very strange, all very meticulous and careful, and one look at Michael’s face says he hasn’t missed any of it. “Never cared for the taste.”

“Says the guy who drinks sixty ounces of Diet Coke daily,” Jack quips. Ray burns and avoids the discrete, purposeful look Ryan is sending him. 

“Ryan,” Gavin slurs suddenly, “can you tell me why you’re so bloody handsome?”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Huh.”

“He’s right, dude,” Geoff hiccups, signalling the bartender. “The fuck gives?” And he’s indignant, like he can’t believe Ryan has the nerve.

“I...honestly don’t know how to answer that.”

“Your jawline is _magnificent_ ,” Gavin says. Beside him, Michael nods in drunken agreement.

“Genetics?” Ryan, amused and confused all at once, shrugs. “How the hell should I know? Why don’t you ask God?”

“Don’t force your religion on me,” Geoff rhapsodizes shrilly. 

Lindsay lowers her voice, leaning toward Ryan. “Is this what typical conversation looks like around here?”

“God,” Ryan snorts. “ _Hardly._ Can’t see what they’re getting so worked up about, but. I’ll take the compliment.” He frowns. “I think.”

“Oh, please: every single person in this fucking bar would say that you’re handsome,” Michael pipes up. “You know what they call that, Ryan? _Truth._ ”

Ray literally cannot believe his ears, or his eyes, for that matter, because Ryan might actually be _blushing_ and he is Ryan the Actual Hot Guy (who doesn’t know he’s hot.) Ray can practically hear One Direction in the background.

“Did you honestly not notice?” Jack asks. “Or…?”

“Oh my God.” Ryan sinks his head down to the bar. “I am so fucking uncomfortable right now.”

“ _Ryan Haywood, you look Jack in the eye and tell the truth_ this instant,” Father Geoff bellows.

“You mean, do I flex at myself in the mirror every day?” Ryan asks, lifting his head. “Because the answer is no.”

“You _don’t_?” Michael actually looks _shocked_. Ryan sighs, long and deep.

“Michael doesn’t count,” Gavin says. “He checks out his own shadow.” Lindsay nods in confirmation.

“You would, too,” Michael says, “if your fucking nose-shadow didn’t overwhelm everything else.”

Gavin pouts. “ _Michael—_ ”

“ _Micoo!_ ” Michael parrots squeakily, and Gavin shrieks when Michael flicks his nose. 

“Stop flirting,” Jack orders. “I know I’m gonna throw up eventually, but I wanna hold my booze down just a little longer.”

“ _Yeah_ , Michael,” Geoff faux-mutters, “accidentally calling him good-looking then touching him, the hell, man, that’s my _son_ —”

“Oh, _bugger off_ ,” Gavin bellows.

“No wonder I never come to these,” Lindsay says offhandedly. Ryan gives her an odd, almost knowing smile. 

Ray, piqued by his momentary joy, feels the achingly familiar itch, and abruptly pushes back from the bar; his stool squeals along the floor. “I’ll be right back.”

Geoff glances at him. “Bathroom, Ray?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t go have a wank,” Gavin says a little louder than necessary. Michael pinches him for Ray.

He’s about a quarter of the way across the bar when a long, pearlescent fingernail taps his shoulder. 

“What,” he deadpans.

The woman responsible is young, with bright eyes, a flushed face, and maybe eleven inches worth of clothing on her tiny, curvaceous body. Her burgundy hair is like Lindsay’s in color and falling down her left cheek.

She looks nervous, probably because Ray looks vicious.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but—is your friend single?”

Ray’s heart pounds, then promptly returns to flatline.

“Which one.”

“The tall one.” Her eyes search behind his head. “The blond.” And Ray doesn’t even need to check.

Ryan the _Actual Fucking Hot Guy._

“Just asking,” she clarifies, with an uncertain smile. Her teeth are perfect. “Don’t wanna make a fool out of myself, right?”

He gives her a dead stare.

He could be cruel, and tell her no, fuck off, take your daddy issues somewhere else. Or he could be an asshole and tell her Ryan’s gay, or has one testicle, or crabs, or has this really weird thing about yodeling when he’s about to get nasty. But he’s just...so fucking _through_ with everything, his brain can’t even muster up a response more creative than his lifeless:

“He sure is.”

“Okay. Cool,” she breathes, moving past him. “Thanks.” She smells like cotton candy and, when her tank top gaps a bit at the neck, her tits are big and round and her cleavage houses a suggestive trail of heart tattoos.

She and Ryan will be a nice couple. Gorgeous, and a grate on Ray’s nerves. Fucking destiny.

The bitterness in his mind gets onto his tongue, leaving this awful taste in his mouth. Smoke. He needs a smoke. He needs twelve, an entire forest fire. Anything to burn it all away.

Ray steps outside when he hears them talking behind him, intending to smoke maybe one or two cigarettes. What he doesn’t expect is to go through the whole pack, or to come back just in time to see Ryan situated with her at the far end of the bar. What a fucking player—he even bought a beer that he definitely hasn’t touched while she sucks down a cocktail.

Just in time to see them sitting there, and just in time to see Ryan leaning in to kiss her.

Ray freezes.

The angle offers an unobstructed view ( _of course, because when would Ray ever catch a fucking break_ ) and Ryan’s just as good of a kisser as Ray will never to admit to imagining. He holds her face with one hand while the other touches her wispy waist, his thumbs stroking her skin and lowering her chin so he can bite her lower lip—and it almost _disappoints_ Ray, maybe for just a second, because he thought that Ryan only did the biting thing to get a rise out of him, but apparently he’d waste it on any drunk piece of ass that walks up to him. But he drop-kicks that thought the fuck away from him and anger immediately takes it place because yeah, _duh_ , Ray, of _course_ Ryan uses it on anything, he’s a predator, try and true, he doesn’t save anything for anyone, nope nope _no_ —

It takes catching a glimpse of Ryan’s tongue greeting hers in her mouth for Ray to wrench away, raw, like an exposed nerve. The kiss scrubbed him from the inside out, yet here he is, still feeling like he still wants to bleach every inch of himself.

“Ray,” Michael laughs. “Dude. That was quite an impressive shit you just took.”

Ray grunts.

“You were gone for like, twenty minutes.”

Grunt number two. “Nah. I went out for a smoke.”

“Ah.” It’s sort of the perfect moment, with Lindsay in the bathroom and Jack and Geoff busy giving Gavin a hard time—and Michael must feel it. “You alright, man? You’re like, even quieter than usual.”

Ray just stares him, overcome with a sudden mourning. Back when he first joined the Crew, he was an outcast. Granted, they all went through New Kid Syndrome, but his silence, introvertedness, and biting wit set him aside from the others, who were very much party animals that celebrated a good mission with booze while Ray preferred to go home and play Red Dead Redemption, or roll one at the park. Michael had been initiated not six months before him, so he was more or less in the same boat as Ray, and yeah, he wasn’t even a thousand miles within Ray’s realm of quiet and got as shit-faced as the rest of them and was basically glued at the hip with Gavin, but they still immediately latched onto each other. There was a time, even, that Ray considered Michael his best friend. 

But that was over a year ago, which, really, is no time at all, even for someone as young as he is, Ray fucking knows that—and yet, how it is. How, in their line of work, it could very well be a century. How things have changed in such a short time. Staring at Michael, Ray feels his stomach bottom out and open up to a creeping sense of loss; sure, he’s still friends with Michael now, hopefully that’ll never change, but they’re not nearly as close as they were or how close, say, he and Gavin are; they’ve grown, both together but also separately, and more-so the latter. Even what started as a mutual mistrust of Ryan eventually splintered off—after all, only one of them got a “headliner thing” with Ryan.

And holy _shit_ , Ray wants to tell Michael. He wants to tell him, but he just _can’t_ —because it’s not that he wants to tell _Michael_ , specifically. It’s that he wants to tell _someone_ , and he could never do that to Michael. He could never use him as something to fill an empty space. As an ad lib. He respects him way too much.

“I’ve been better,” he says, “but I’ve also been worse, so.” He shrugs. “I’ll live.”

Michael nods, the brief moment of conflict in his dark eyes overshadowed by beer as he takes another sip. Even sober, Ray doubts Michael would push it. The thought is a splash of icy water.

Then, a surprise:

“That thing Gav and I did...that didn’t...upset you. Not really. Right?”

Ray _must_ be slipping, because he can’t even predict Drunk Michael, the biggest creature of habit the Crew’s ever seen. _Fuck._

“No,” Ray lies—well. _Half_ -lies. It did and didn’t. “I know you two are just being stupid assholes, like always.”

“ _Hey._ ”

“Sorry—stupid assholes, like always when you’re _drunk_.”

Michael nods, satisfied. The beer has left a frothy line on his upper lip. “That’s fucking better.” Lindsay slips in beside him. 

“Benefits of always being sober: you get to watch your friends act stupid as fuck,” Ray says.

“I’m a chatty drunk, if anything,” Lindsay says.

“She is, dude,” Michael affirms. “Can’t get her to shut the fuck up. And dumbass, how the fuck is that a _benefit_? With _us_ especially? We’re a nightmare when we’re _sober_.”

“Dirt,” Ray declares.

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Just saying. I have a _looooong_ list of receipts.”

“No doubt,” Michael mutters into his glass, finishing it off with a long swallow.

“Plus,” Lindsay adds, “you’re not the only walking, talking sobriety among them anymore. Michael’s gotta watch his back doubly as hard.”

Ray’s skin prickles. Somehow, they always come back to Ryan.

“Speaking of,” Michael says, glancing toward the lovebirds’ corner. “ _Somebody’s_ getting some.”

Ray can’t will himself to look.

Until he does, and they’re still kissing in this hypnotically slow way that puts The Very Bad Thoughts in his head.

“I love her hair,” Lindsay remarks. She twirls a strand of her own around her finger. “She has an awesome taste in color.”

“And men,” Michael quips. “Right, Ray?”

Oh _Christ._

Mercifully, by some act of fucking God, Geoff signals them from the other side of the bar. “Uh-oh,” Michael says, “I think the party’s over.”

“Shame,” Ray says. Meaning, really, _Thank fuck._

“Ray,” Geoff says as he, Lindsay, and Michael climb onto barstools behind him, “I bought you a drink. To apologize for having to put up with our drunk asses all night.”

Ray stares at him peculiarly. “Geoff, I know you were joking before, but are you so shitfaced that you forgot I _don’t actually drink_?”

“No,” Geoff cackles. He passes Ray a tall mug of ice water. “On the house, buddy.”

Ray rolls his eyes. 

“No, no, no,—show some respect for your elders and say ‘Thank you, Geoff, sir.’”

“Fine: thank you, Big Daddy.”

“Oh, Ray,” Geoff says with a mock-sob, clutching his heart through his suit jacket. “You know just the right words to say.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Michael mutters good-naturedly, just as Ryan walks up to them.

“ _Ryan_ ,” Geoff says, “how goes the poon hunt?”

“Fine,” Ryan says. His mouth is smudged with lipstick that definitely isn’t his. “Think I’m gonna head home soon.”

Gavin peers over his shoulder. The woman is still at the end of the bar, eating a piece of fruit from her drink. “You’re not taking the bird with you?”

“I am.”

“ _Oh_.” Slowly, suggestively, Gavin lifts his eyebrows.

“Good job, buddy,” Jack says.

“What the fuck?” Geoff muses, bewildered. “You talked to her for like...six minutes.”

“Well, Geoff, apparently I’m mind-blowingly gorgeous, so I guess she couldn’t resist my charms.”

“C’mon Geoff: he probably just pulled out his dick like, ‘Let’s go,’” Michael says. 

“‘Take a seat,’” Gavin chimes in. 

“Bullshit,” Ray hears his mouth saying. “He probably slipped her something.”

Ryan looks at him slowly, in the eye. Ray feels the air waver.

Ray can deal with Ryan when he’s being crazy—or _whatever_ —during one of his eighteen different mood swings. When Ryan’s emotional, Ray almost knows what to do with him. But he can’t take Ryan empty. Hollow. Staring at Ray with neutral eyes, a blank face, nothing there to read. A stranger’s lipstick all across his mouth.

Ryan the Crazy Guy, Ray can handle. But like this? He doesn’t know _what_ to think.

“Well,” Geoff bellows, his hand coming down on the bar, “I, for one, congratulate you my good man, and wish you the best.”

“Don’t forget to wrap it,” Jack offers. “Loads of weird shit crawling around these days.”

“He won’t,” Michael says. “Sick fuck’ll probably dive into uncharted territory raw.”

Ryan closes his eyes. “I think I’m gonna go now.”

“Name the kid after me,” Gavin slurs, virtually to no one.

“Got it. Be back in the morning after I get to work on one ‘Dumbfuck Haywood.’”

Thinly, Gav warbles, “ _Bless you, Ryan._ ”

“Stupid Plebby Brit Haywood,” Michael says, smiling.

“Big Nose McGee Haywood,” Lindsay says.

“Eurotrashtard Haywood,” Geoff chimes in. “One word.”

“Gavin II,” Jack says, “Electric Boogaloo.”

“ _PUBERT_ ,” Gav howls. 

Rolling his eyes light-heartedly, Ryan walks away.

Ray watches him come toward her. The woman really is beautiful. Ray can see that, even standing all the way over here. She’s probably about his age, and didn’t seem to have any bad intentions. But he almost can’t stand it—that Ryan _kissed_ someone, a _stranger_ , where on the other hand he gave Ray the best orgasm of his life and...what?

Bit his _lip_ after? Like, does he want Ray, or does he want Ray to squirm? Because it’s fucking working.

The idea that Ray could be jealous turns his stomach.

He has to be. What else would he call this—this full-body _ache_? How he looks at a total stranger, someone who didn’t speak but a dozen words to him, and how he feels _hatred_? What else could it be? Holy fuck.

“But Michael,” Gavin says quietly, while the rest of the Crew chats, “what about the bet?”

Michael looks toward Ryan; the woman laughs, touching his arm.

“Nah,” he says. “We’re fine.”

Ray could honestly fucking kill them all.

——

The bus is eleven minutes late and counting when Ray feels the shadow.

“Didn’t you drive here?” he asks. He does not turn around. 

“I did, but I have to take Geoff’s drunk ass home, and he’s busy pissing in the bushes somewhere.” Ryan shrugs. “So.”

“So,” Ray echoes, staring off down the street. Twelve minutes.

He won’t turn around. She might be with Ryan. Ray doesn’t know how he could deal with that.

“Just so you know,” Ryan says, “she means nothing.”

Welp. Guess she’s not. 

“I literally don’t care,” Ray replies crisply. “Have a fucking orgy. Have twenty.”

“You’re a liar.”

Ray _jolts_ at that, and behind him Ryan’s calm as he fishes for his keys.

“But that’s fine,” he murmurs, nearly to himself. “That’s fine.”

Ray hugs his jacket closer to his body, trembling in spite of the warm night. Summer’s coming, but hoodie season is year-round for him.

“Then why are you gonna sleep with her?” he says emptily.

“Who says I am?”

“You had your tongue in her mouth for a good ten minutes. You’re not exactly gonna go fishing with her, Ryan.”

“Oh, Ray,” Ryan sighs. Whatever that even _means_.

But by the time Ray turns to look at Ryan, he’s halfway to his car.

——

At exactly 2:59 AM, Ray’s doorbell rings.

Normally, Ray sleeps like a fucking rock. Fond memories with the Crew include Michael and/or Geoff slapping him repeatedly in a vain attempt to get him to regain consciousness (or that time Jack took to dumping sixteen ounces of water on him before he finally opened his eyes.) Good times.

But today—well. It’s not like he’s asleep or anything. How could he be?

Ray, already on edge, goes rigid. The last time his doorbell rang after midnight, Gavin had been shot. Geoff’s bloody hands left red marks on the door where he knocked. 

Ray goes to answer, still fully dressed minus the shoes and hoodie. God knows why he doesn’t look through the peephole first. Who cares? He’s fully strapped, convinced it’s crisis mode, that there are cops minutes from the building and someone in the Crew blundered bad.

Then he opens the door, and somehow it’s one thousand times worse.

“Hi,” Ryan laughs.

Ray stares at him, quiet. Ryan is still smiling. So’s the lady from the bar, standing by his side. Her hair is up in a bun. 

There’s this like, _fog_ of weed that comes off of them. Holy shit. Four blunt’s worth? Five? The fuck. Ryan went from psycho choirboy to psycho choirboy who tokes a week’s supply of herb in two hours. Plot twist. 

“What?” Ray deadpans.

“Hi,” Ryan repeats.

“Christ,” Ray says. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Pfft.” Ryan rolls his eyes. “No.”

“Just really fucking high,” the woman clarifies, giggling (not that she needs to clarify dick.) She’s _tiny_ compared to him, tucked under his arm, maybe a foot shorter. His jacket looks gigantic on her.

His jacket. The stupid leather one with the bands around the elbows. Ryan didn’t sleep with her, but he let her wear it? Right.

“What do you want,” Ray bites out. 

“A place to crash,” says Ryan.

“What? It’s three fucking AM. Drive yourself home.”

“Aw, but Ray,” Ryan actually _pouts_ , eyes wide and glimmering. “I’m too high. I don’t wanna drive off the road.”

Anger pulses through Ray like a nuclear blast.

“Call a cab.”

“C’mon, Ray.” The playfulness in Ryan’s tone vanishes. “It’ll only be a few hours. Just let me sleep it off.”

“No,” Ray repeats, deadpan. Ryan’s smile, while sloppy, is just this side of malicious. He might be stoned, but he still knows _exactly_ what the fuck he’s doing. “Because the minute you come in here, you’re gonna fuck, and I won’t be able to sleep.”

“Already did that,” the woman chimes in helpfully. Christ almighty. So much for _Who says I am?_

Why Ray chose to believe that thin-ass lie, he’ll never know. Why Ryan chose to tell it? Well. He can guess that much. 

Ryan kisses her temple, then her nose, then her lips, and she lets out a nauseating giggle. He’s also staring at Ray, with what could be hunger—or contempt. His mouth is screwed into a grimace that says, whatever it is, he’s enjoying every second of this.

“Go home, Ryan,” Ray says dully.

He goes to close the door, which Ryan has anticipated already and blocked it. His body is big and strong and Ray’s not weak in any way, but he _is_ just fucking tired, like, he just wants this to just be _over_ already.

“Do I need to call the police on you?”

Ryan utters a dark laugh at that, because it’s an empty threat and they both damn well know it.

“Why can’t you just…?” Ray starts, throat dry. Ryan’s eyes hood, and what Ray was going to say hangs: _why can’t you just_ leave _?_ But like Ryan would ever have the mercy to do that.

Please.

Ray opens the door.

——

In the morning, he’s thinking he’s lucky enough to have lost them. Until he hears the shower squeak on from the guest room.

The woman, barefoot and back in her own clothes, is in the kitchen. Her hair drips wetly down her back.

“Morning,” she says.

Ray heads for the coffeemaker.

His phone, charging on the breakfast bar, has nine texts on it.

**Michael** : You okay? I saw Ry trying to talk to you after we all left  
**Geoff to: Jack, Michael, Gavin, Ray, and Ryan** : Vespucci Beach, Thursday, 4:00 P.M. Rendezvous Jack’s. Getaway und pier. Be ready.  
**Gavin to: Geoff, Jack, Michael, Ray, and Ryan** : Will there be snacks?  
**Geoff to: Jack, Michael, Gavin, Ray, and Ryan** : Shut the hell up  
**Michael** : I’m assuming you’re sleeping, but seriously dude if he’s giving you a hard time, fucking tell me. I’ll get Geoff involved  
**Michael** : This is Gavin and I stole Michael’s phone to say that I s  
**Michael** : ECOND THAT SORRY MICHAEL GRABBED THE PHONE BACK  
**Michael** : God fucking damnit

And then, strangest of all, there’s one from a number he doesn’t recognize.

**+1-(424)-726-8904** : Hey, it’s Lindsay. Michael gave me your number... Could we talk? I don’t mean to freak you out, but it’s about Ryan. 

And that’s not meant to freak him out how?

**Ray** : Why?

“I’m sorry,” the woman says suddenly.

Ray looks up. “Huh?”

“About us being here. I’m sorry.”

He lifts an eyebrow.

“Ryan was super-impolite to just barge in. I could tell you really didn’t want us here.”

Ray shrugs. The comment makes him thaw to her, and the last thing he wants to be right now is kind, or appreciative in any way.

His phone vibrates.

**+1-(424)-726-8904** : Can’t say yet. I’m free on Friday. Hbu?

Uncertainly, he fires one back:

**Ray** : Sure. When?

“You have a nice apartment.” The woman looks around. She really is quite pretty, with that red velvet hair. Ray wonders what he would think of her if he met her outside of Ryan. “I love penthouses. Anything that oversees the entire city.”

“Are you guys dating now?” he blurts. She glances at him curiously. “I mean like...Ryan doesn’t strike me as the type who…” _Sticks around._ But she’s been nothing but courteous and friendly, and what kind of asshole would that make him look like, to say that to a polite stranger?

She goes, “He seems like the type to fuck and go?”

He gags a bit, quietly, and nods. “Yeah. Basically.”

She smiles. “I don’t know. Maybe he likes me enough to want me to stay. I definitely like him. Had a blast last night.”

Ray, who’s dying of curiosity, doesn’t ask.

“And, to be clear, we didn’t fuck, so even if he is the type…” She gestures vaguely. “Holy shit. I’m kinda blabbering.”

Ray eyes her suspiciously without meaning to. They didn’t? But she said...okay, maybe she was just really, really high. He doesn’t continue the conversation. Frankly, he doesn’t wanna think about Ryan and this lady in any sort of sexual situations. 

“We’re leaving, by the way,” she says, appropriately interpreting his silence. “As soon as he’s out of the shower. Again—sorry. It was really rude to just show up like that.”

He looks into her eyes, wide and sincere behind her squarish glasses. 

"You know who we are, right?" 

"Of course," she snorts. "Doesn't the entire city?" 

He feels his lips quirk. "And that doesn't bother you?" 

She shrugs. "Not really. Like I said, we're not dating." 

And Ray just might believe her. 

Stranger yet, he might like her a little. 

“What’s your name?” he decides after a while, because hey, it can’t hurt to ask.

“Meg.”

“Ray. It’s nice to like, officially meet you.”

She smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I'm working on getting the chapters out faster, so bear with me! Having a full-time job, friends, family, and two cuddly, attention-hog kittens takes up a lot of a gal's time!


	3. Push Comes to Shove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Structures are only capable of withstanding a certain amount of tension or pressure before finally breaking--and humans, Ray's beginning to find out, aren't immune to this rule, either.
> 
> It kinda sucks major ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, so...holy shit. Hi. HI. I'm still alive.
> 
> This story is far from being abandoned, my friends, and, as a reward, I've cooked up a SUPER-long chapter for your viewing pleasure ("reward" aka sohardtosay desperately trying to excuse her absence).
> 
> This is a climax chapter of sorts. QUITE a few important plot points are visited in this chapter (which takes place during one crazy Thursday afternoon) that contribute to the overall story. Enjoy--and, as always, thank you to all of my wonderful commentators and kudo-ers (is that a thing??) for your feedback and support. I'm undeserving of your kindness!
> 
> (edit: I added in some coding in terms of italics that somehow didn't make it into the final cut of this thing)

That Thursday, they go to a bar in downtown before meeting at Jack’s.

Ray has had his phone basically on silent since kicking Ryan and Meg out of his apartment, so TND drive to his place and all but drag him out the door. Ray makes dying cat noises all the way down to the street, which has Michael shouting and Gavin squeaking out laughter. A woman in the lobby with a tiny, all-white puff of a dog in her oversized purse watches them pass with slight horror. 

Ray nearly laughs at that—nearly. These days, he’s really felt like the wet-blanket third wheel to Michael and Gav, _especially_ to bars it seems, and for that, he’s kind of regretful. Even ignoring his phone for a few days (because hell, he thinks, they know where he lives, they’ll find him if they need him) couldn’t wash Ryan’s existence clean from his mind. When keeping it on Do Not Disturb didn’t work, because _he was still seeing the texts Ryan sent him_ , he hid it in a drawer in the kitchen. And when _that_ didn’t work, well. He felt horrifically, terribly cornered, because the truth was more and more staring him in the face: that he was _obsessed_. That Ryan was in his blood, his head, his skin, the very air he fucking breathed. Whether he fucking liked it or not.

Not that Ray would _ever_ admit that fully. Tuesday night was when he hit the _fuck this shit_ stage of denial and broke his fast (again), and smoked a bowl, and then another and another, until he was high for about eighteen consecutive hours. Which was fucking dangerous, and the sort of thing that would kick Jack and Geoff’s mommy and daddy instincts into high gear, but the smoke was the only thing that successfully screened those damned images of Ryan kissing Meg out of Ray’s head. So, yeah. Fuck it. He’s even the tiniest bit high, still, when Team Nice Dynamite all but kicks down his door. Maybe why he’s willing to be funny and stupid like Old Ray, but that lasts all of four damn seconds, before he’s sat in the back of the shitbox Michael boosted for the heist, being reprimanded like the naughty little boy he is.

“Geoff’s pissed,” Michael says mildly, for starters. He flips up the turn signal. The inside of the car, some 80’s sedan, smells like a grandmother’s house (or what Ray, who never knew either set of his grandparents, imagines it to smell like). “Are you just like, not answering your phone these days or what, bud?”

“Nope,” Ray says. Michael clicks his tongue in disapproval.

“What if one of us got in _trouble_? How would you have found out?”

“You know where I live, dude. You fucking came to my house like, just now.”

“Fuck you,” Michael says without heat. “You know what I mean. If we’d needed help like, fucking immediately.”

“Well,” Ray says. “You didn’t. So it all works out.”

“Christ,” Michael sighs. “What is _up_ with you these days, dude?”

Ray shrugs him off, looking out the window. 

“God, Ray, you look like shit,” Gavin says pleasantly.

“Thanks, bud.”

“Leave your fucking house when we’re not doing missions, will ya?” Michael says. “Or else Geoff’ll kill you.”

“What if I die while in my apartment?”

Michael pauses, considering it. “Then he’ll kill your corpse.”

“Or use black magic,” Gavin says, “and resurrect you.”

“Yeah. And _then_ kill you.”

Ray sighs and returns to looking out the window. At a stoplight in Pillbox Hill, Michael cuts him a genuine, concerned look into the rearview, which Ray forces himself to disregard.

At the bar, when they pull into a parking space, he happens to glance out toward the nearest intersection and sees a couple at the bus shelter that’s a little ways down the road. They’re leaning against each other, and at one point, she turns to look at him and they kiss, and it’s not even like, making out. It’s a _peck_ , but Ray still keeps his eyes glued to them, feeling something odd rustle up at the bottom of his stomach.

Gavin slamming the passenger door jolts him back into the present. Shaking his head, Ray hops out. 

They select seats at the bar, and talk over their beers—well. Correction: Michael and _Gav_ talk, while Ray swirls water around in his glass and stares off into space. It’s even more unbearable and awkward than the last time he went to a bar with them, even without Ryan macking on a random girl and Gavin drunkenly demanding to know why Ryan’s so good-looking. Yeah. Even more awkward than _that_ , and Ray knows it’s all him, nothing that they’re doing. Which fucking sucks, but, you know, whatever.

There’s a bowl of toothpicks on the bar. Ray takes one and unwraps it. Turns it around and around in his hands. The movement seems to catch Michael’s eye, as he leans over and says, “What do you think, Ray?”

“About?”

“Michael, _no_ —”

Michael grins. “About Gav getting a nose job.”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Gavin yells, which isn’t that much louder than the rowdy volume of the surrounding bar. “Shut up, you damn _git_.”

“Ooh, a git,” Michael mocks. “I think I pissed him off.”

Ray rolls his eyes. “He’s just insecure.”

“Shut it,” Gavin snaps, poutily drinking his beer. Michael reaches out and tweaks Gav’s nose, which, of course, has Gavin spraying froth unintentionally.

“If it makes you feel anybody,” Michael says cheerily, “I think you look like shit with or without your nose.”

The bartender looks on, an unimpressed eyebrow raised before he snaps into customer service mode and moves to mop up the mess. Gavin glowers at Michael, but he’s smiling, too, and Michael returns the look teasingly.

Ray clenches his fists a little.

He turns away from them, tracing a pattern onto the smooth counter of the bar. Without thinking, he starts to scrape off tiny shards of wood from the toothpick, and whittles it down; one shard gets stuck beneath his thumbnail.

His other hand, which he’s resting his chest on, slips out and takes the toothpick, now sharp and paper-thin, turning it around. Without thinking, he presses it in the base of his palm, where the harder part of his hand is. It pierces the flesh just so, too weak to get much further; a tiny bead of blood bubbles around the wood.

Ray wrenches it out, heart pounding. He stares at the slightly bloodied tip, then at his hand, and the small drop of blood that slips down his skin. Not thinking twice, he grabs a napkin and presses it into the heel of his palm.

“You okay, Ray?” Michael pipes up.

Ray grunts. “Yeah. I’m good.” He can barely keep his hands from shaking. The lines gouged into his stomach pulse and flare with heat.

“You sure?” Michael says, right as Gavin sets down his glass with an unflattering belch.

“I gotta piss,” he chokes out, burping again before he slides off of his stool. “Be right back.”

“Outta here, bud,” Michael says, Ray’s mild predicament forgotten as Michael gives Gavin a firm smack on the tush. Gav lets out a squeaky bird noise, grabbing his ass as he scurries away.

Ray sips at his water uncomfortably; the blood’s already dried, so he wraps up the toothpick in the napkin. “Holy shit,” Michael says. “That kid’s so skinny that that actually _hurt_ my hand. Like, that was like slapping a two by four.”

“Mmhm.”

“Christ, how am I supposed to spank him at his next birthday party? When I’m like, _at_ risk for breaking my hand?”

“Michael,” Ray says awkwardly. Michael casts him a sidelong look. “Listen. It’s great if you wanna bang Gavin and everything, but can you maybe like, cool it with the public foreplay? I feel like I’m taking the backseat in your courtship for—”

Michael looks taken aback. “ _What?_ ”

Inwardly, Ray winces. Fuck him and his words sometimes, honest to fuck, because now Michael’s got his eyes all narrowed in a concerned way.

“What makes you say that?”

“Fuck it. Never mind.”

“Ray,” Michael says uneasily, “what’s up, buddy?”

“Sorry. I’m on edge.”

“Well, I mean... _yeah_ ,” Michael drawls sarcastically. “We’ve all kinda fucking noticed.”

Ray nods. “Sorry. Shit's just been so fucked for me lately, dude. Like...you don't even _know_.”

“Never should have taken that weed break,” Michael quips, but his face is shadowed by nerve. No matter how many sips of his drink he takes.

Ray exhales. “Okay. What’d I say?”

Over-masculine grunt. “Nothin’.”

“Shut the fuck up and tell me. What is it?”

Michael shrugs. “It’s not you, dude. I dunno. Sometimes I just...worry.”

“About?”

“Gavin.” Dismissive sniff. Michael rolls his wedding band between his fingers. The whole thing’s chock full of so many metaphors. “Like...we’re joking around with that stuff. I know it, he knows it. But sometimes I worry if he _doesn’t_. You know?”

“Why? Because you’re married and he isn’t?”

Michael forces out a sigh. “Because he kissed me, Ray.”

Ray, who’s in the middle of a gulp of water, chokes significantly on it. Michael looks pained.

“Or,” Michael says thoughtfully while Ray utters wet coughs, “maybe _I_ kissed _him_. Whatever. Point is, lips touched, first base was crossed. Yada yada.”

“Okay,” Ray says thickly, recovering his breath. He sets the bottle down. “Okay. Okay. _What._ ”

“He comes over to my house a lot, after missions and hits and stuff. Which is _fine_ , you know? Cuz it’s _Gavin_ , and he’s my boy, and it’s just _no big deal_. But we usually drink, with Lindsay so it’s normally all good.”

“But you were alone this time,” Ray says.

“No,” Michael says. He winces when he does. “God. We were _really_ drunk. Lindsay went to the kitchen to clean up, and Gav and I were sitting on the couch. And I asked him some stupid fucking question. Like, ‘what time is it?’ even though there’s a fucking clock mounted right above the TV. And he said, ‘dunno,’ and we were looking at each other, and sitting _really_ close and just—like. Yeah. It happened. That happened.”

Ray just stares at him at this point, unsure of what the fuck to even say. Nod and show sympathy (because apparently making out with somebody is like, some really terrible, awful, shitty thing or something)? Blurt out “whoa, same, except I got head and it was in a movie theatre and I was sober… _we’re so in sync_ ”? Be a douche and be all “called it” because, hey, _he kinda did_??

Michael swallows, catching a drop of condensation off of his beer with his finger. “You know the worst part, Ray? It was _good_. It was awesome. Like, I enjoyed the shit out of it, even though my wife was literally ten feet away in the kitchen. And I was making out with my British douchebag friend on our couch. _Our_ couch.”

“Wow,” Ray says.

“I told her, too.”

 _Shit._ “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Michael’s aggressively avoiding eye contact. “It’s whatever. She wasn’t happy about it, but she appreciated me telling her. Like, she’s my wife. I’m not gonna _lie_ to her about that sort of thing, y’know?”

“Sure.”

Michael pauses, then snorts. “Wow. You’re pretty one-wordy over there, buddy.”

“Sorry,” Ray mutters. “I just like...honestly don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah. I figured.”

“So how does Vav feel about all of this?” Ray asks, at the exact same moment that Gavin returns from the bathroom. So he and Michael are left awkwardly snapping their mouths shut. Lovely.

“What’d I miss?” Gav asks offhandedly. It feels forced—primarily because it is, and he’s looking for a way to break the tension.

“Nothin’,” Michael says, in the same dismissive, dudebro-ish way he replied to Ray earlier. Gavin immediately stiffens, because TND don’t talk that way to each other. Ever.

“We should head out soon,” Ray offers. They nod, but not much more than that, drinking their beers in silence.

“Alright,” he sighs, sliding down to the floor. “I’m gonna go grab a smoke. Be back in a few.”

“Don’t take twenty minutes this time,” Michael jokes, right as Ray turns toward the door of the bar and catches sight of Ryan, suited up to the neck in his heist gear. His eyes are as cool and dark as a deep lake, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to be here.

“Oh shit,” Ray says.

“What?” Gavin says; Michael glances over his shoulder, and his eyes instantly slit.

“What is _he_ doing here?”

“Great question,” Ray mutters, shaking a smoke from his pack. He sounds dismissive, and damn near feels it, too. Ever since the unbelievably awkward encounter with Ryan and Meg barging into Ray’s apartment, he’s done his best this week to avoid Ryan more than ever. That’s the cycle, it seems—blowout, ignoring, reconciliation, blowout, rinse and repeat—and Ray’s determined to break it. Any bit of pathetic, sad hope in his heart, he’s convinced himself to banish it. Ignored texts from Ryan, pretended he doesn’t fucking exist. Maybe it’s best to keep work out of his personal life, anyhow. Treat Ryan as a coworker and not much else. 

Ryan comes right up to the bar, setting down a case. Probably his mask. Or a bomb. Who knows—after all, it is _Ryan_.

“Afternoon, gentleman,” he says casually.

“Hey,” Gavin replies. Michael’s a pillar of tension, and Ray is pointedly looking away.

Ryan asks for an ice water. As the bartender scoops ice into a cup, Michael bursts, “So. Weird coincidence that you’re here.”

Ryan takes the glass, smiling his thanks to the bartender. “Geoff sent me,” he says without looking at Michael. “Protective detail.”

“Bull, but okay.”

“Nope.” Ryan drinks. “No bull. After you told him where you were going, he started to get paranoid that you could get tailed. So. I’m here.”

“Just shut the fuck up,” Michael says hotly. “Like we’re not _strapped_? Jesus.”

Ryan shrugs, finishing off the water. “Hey, safety in numbers, right? You can ask him, if you’d like.” He sets the glass back down on the bar, and the defensive look on Michael’s face says that he plans to do just that. Ryan rolls his head, cracks his neck, then smiles coolly at the lads. “I guess I’m your Safety Buddy this afternoon.”

Ray jolts, right as Ryan walks away. He holds himself still for a moment, breathing in deep. The pinprick on his hand pulses with his heartbeat. 

“I don’t trust him,” Michael says lowly. Dangerously. He watches Ryan head to a table, his gaze dark and guarded. “No matter what he says.”

Ray shrugs. “I don’t give a shit regardless. I’m gonna go smoke.”

“Be careful, X-Ray,” Gavin says uncertainly. Ray waves him off.

Ryan’s pulled out a book and has started to read, but even without looking, Ray knows he’s being watched. He can feel it, like a hot spot burning into him, as he moves past Ryan’s table. But Ray keeps his eyes determinedly forward. He’s almost proud of himself for it.

There’s an alley behind the bar, narrow and littered with trash. A bum scampers away like a frightened cat as Ray steps outside and lights up. He glances toward the sky, which is crowded with pale clouds—perfect weather for a heist.

He pulls out his phone, ready for action after its four day rest, burning partway through the paper on his cig as he checks his texts. One from Ryan; he quickly exits out of the preview, but not before catching sight of what it says ( _Omw_ ). Judging from when it was sent, Ray’s guessing that that’s what Ryan sent to indicate he was on his way to the bar. At least he gave warning—not that Ray _cares_ anymore now or anything. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he brings up Safari. 

Behind him, somebody says, “Hey.”

Ray nearly whirls on him, fully expecting it to be Ryan, but is somewhat relieved to find it’s just some dude from the bar, around Geoff’s age but much grayer, and casually dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. He says, “Are you friends with those weird guys sitting at the bar?”

“Depends,” Ray says, taking the cigarette from his mouth. “Is one of them British?”

The dude nods.

“Other one...loud? Curly hair?”

Another nod. “Yeah.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ray drags in another lungful of smoke. “That I am, then.”

“Ah.” The guy makes a noise, hands in his pockets. “So...listen. Not to be rude, but are they fags or something?”

Ray starts.

“Because they’re kind of starting to make the rest of the bar uncomfortable.”

Ray blinks, disbelieving. This is a major city in Southern California. Back home, up north, in the podunk desert towns he spent his youth hopping between, he was used to this shit...but _here_?

“I was gonna tell them to cut that shit out, but I figured I’d just let you know if you wanted to maybe tell them to stop. Seeing as they’ll probably listen and all.”

“Well,” Ray says, “I’m not exactly their parents, so…”

The guy gives him a shrewd once-over. He’s noticeably drunk, even at a distance, and has his legs spread in that cocked way that belongs to somebody who’s hammered but doesn’t wanna show it. Ray sighs inwardly.

“Shit. You’re not... _one_ of them, are you?”

Ray blows out a jet of smoke, rolling his eyes. 

“Look,” the guy slurs, “you and your friends are gonna have to leave. Like, be as gay as you want, but this isn’t a fairy bar. Know what kind of establishment you’re stepping into and don’t push that shit on us.”

“Just shut the fuck up, dude,” Ray snaps, flicking his cigarette into a nearby gutter. So much for trying to relax. He encroaches on the guy. “And don’t you go saying shit to my friends. That’s—”

“Whoa, back up, _dude_ ,” the guy snarls. He gives Ray a good, solid shove. “Don’t get near me. I don’t wanna be fucking _contaminated_.”

Ray stumbles a bit on the ground, crunching over old newspaper and trash. Despite the violence, he’s not particularly bothered—he’s been through this sort of thing with plenty of guys, young and old, shoving him around and giving him a hard time—but then, the dude hocks back and spits. Right onto Ray’s face.

“Fuckin’ cock-sucking fairy-ass _fuck_.”

And suddenly, Ray’s entire body flushes with dark, murderous rage. Zero to a fuckin’ hundred.

He’s strapped at his ankle. His fingers flash for it, at exactly the same time he realizes that’s a terrible idea and also at exactly the same time the guy is gripped from behind in the tightest, most brutal-looking chokehold Ray’s ever seen. The man’s face goes from being rude and vicious to outright terrified.

Ryan locks him in place. 

“ _Ryan_ ,” Ray yells. Ryan ignores him, and spins the dude around like he weighs nothing. He lets him go mid-swing, and the man flies into a wall with a hard, sickening thud.

The guy, instead of going down like he really ought to, leaps up the moment he has his footing back, and charges Ryan. They’re roughly the same height, but Ryan’s devastatingly stronger. And he doesn’t relent after he’s knocked the man down. He just...keeps fucking going. He _obliterates_ the dude, pummeling him until he can’t even raise his arms to defend himself, and then some.

Ray feels to be paralyzed in horror. This is worse than all of the times that Ryan’s gone berserk and started stabbing people uncontrollably. Because Ryan’s face doesn’t change. He has the emptiest, most unrelenting stare as he pounds the dude into the ground. Ray wants to leap on him, wants to scream and stop him, but he doesn’t know if that would even _work_. The attack is near-silent; the guy’s hit in the throat first, so he can’t make a sound. He probably blacks out after a while. 

Near-soundlessly, Ray finally says: “Ryan.”

Ryan pulls off of the guy with a gasp. A shudder visibly runs through him.

His shirt is especially low-cut in the back, bearing the beginning tips of KING above the neckline. His entire body shakes. His fists are a dark, sickening red. 

“Ryan,” Ray whispers, a little unnerved, a little fucking _terrified_. “Enough.”

Below, the guy is wheezing like he’s struggling to just like, not _die_ —holy shit. He probably _is_ dying, the way Ryan was wailing on the poor fucker.

Ryan draws in a deep, tremulous breath.

“It’s over,” Ray whispers.

“I say when it’s over,” Ryan croaks.

“Ryan, for Christ’s sake—”

Ryan whirls on him, so suddenly that Ray stumbles back a step. 

Ryan, surging right up in his space. 

The Mad fucking King, part two of the R&R Connection, leaning forward and making Ray feel their three inch height difference more strongly than he ever has before.

Ryan’s voice is as smooth as velvet. “Do you want me to kill him?”

“ _Ryan_ —”

“Answer me. Do you want me to kill him, Ray?”

“Are you fucking _insane_?” It’s not the first time Ray’s asked Ryan this, he’s pretty sure. But his voice has never quite splintered so brokenly and angrily at the end. 

“ _You dooo_ ,” Ryan sings, low and breathless. “You do. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You _want_ to see it in my eyes.”

Without breaking eye contact, Ryan slips his handgun out the waistband of his jeans.

“Ryan,” Ray says colorlessly. Not whispered. Not yelled. Just spoken. He feels a part of him, a huge part, curl into the tiniest ball.

“Tell me what you want.” Ryan looks ready to eat him. They haven’t seen each other in a couple of days, and the moment feels weakened by that, almost—this impromptu, all-kinds-of-fucked-up coming together. He’s beautiful the way a hurricane is beautiful. The way a tornado is beautiful. “Tell me you don’t want me to kill him, and I’ll go back inside.”

Ray stares at Ryan, into his eyes. His back is perfectly straight.

“He’ll call the police,” he whispers.

“He won’t,” Ryan replies, also in a whisper. And deep down, Ray knows that, too. The guy doesn’t seem the type. He’s too proud. Too reckless.

But Ray doesn’t speak.

Triumphantly and slowly, Ryan smiles. “What did he say to you, Ray? He shoved you. He spit at you. Why?”

“He was talking about Michael and Gavin.”

“Did he upset you?” Ryan breathes.

“Yes.”

“Did he piss you off? Did you wanna hit him? Blow his fucking head off?”

Ray trembles. He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. 

“L-listen,” the guy wheezes around a mouthful of blood, and they’re so into it that no one even bothers to kick him, or punch him, or shut him the hell up. They just let him cough and cough and cough.

“You do it,” Ray whispers, finally able to rip his eyes away.

“No.”

“If it has to happen—you fucking do it, Ryan.”

“ _Why?_ ” Ryan breathes. “Can’t bring yourself to do it?”

“ _No_ ,” Ray snarls under his breath. He doesn’t know why, at this moment, that he chooses to be honest. It just happens. “Because I’m afraid I’m going to like it.”

Slowly, Ryan’s mouth spreads with a smile.

“I’m afraid, if I shoot him and leave his corpse in this shitty little alley, that I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”

“Your stomach doesn’t hurt anymore when you kill. Does it?”

“No,” Ray croaks. He looks sideways, briefly, and sees that the guy has collapsed. Shit. He might die regardless. 

“I think you’re going to _love_ it,” Ryan whispers, and it’s all Ray has not to shudder. Ryan tilts his head, still smiling. “ _God_ , I missed you. You haven’t been returning my calls.

“Just kill him, Ryan.”

But Ryan, aggravatingly, puts the gun away. He’s still smiling. It, in fact, never wavers. “Not like this.”

Ray just looks at him, feeling empty. Feeling absolutely nothing at all. He nearly asks why Ryan even bothered to offer, but he knows. He fucking knows.

Ryan goes to squat down next to the guy, lifting his head up by the bloodstained collar of his shirt. Ryan leans in, talking softly—almost _lovingly_ , as if to a wounded animal he found on the side of the road:

“If you tell anybody about what happened here, I will find you and fucking kill you.”

The man, his mouth spilling a bit with blood, whimpers.

“Do you know who we are?”

“Y...yes.” He chokes a bit.

“Good.” Ryan smiles, patting his face. “After this, leave this ally. Walk out of here, and don’t come back to this bar. And if even one cop or detective asks me about you, I will cut your balls off and feed them to you. Sound good?”

The man cries. “Okay. Yes.”

Ryan shoves him back onto the ground, satisfied, and uses the man’s shirt to wipe his hands off. Without looking at Ray again, he heads back into the bar, calmly strolling. The guy rolls over painfully, and looks up at Ray with glassy, tear-filled eyes.

Ray feels himself staring soullessly back.

For heists, as a backup (and per Jack’s rabid insistence), Ray’s always strapped at three different points on his body: his ankle, his waistband, and his thigh. Michael and Gavin carry the biggest, scariest pieces they can conceal, Ray knows, and he imagines Geoff, at the very least, probably does the same. But Ray, ever since he dug his grandfather’s knife out a while back, only carries two handguns these days. The knife he keeps—and he won’t pretend he doesn’t understand why—strapped to his thigh in its leather case. He’s never used it offensively—also for reasons he can’t pretend he doesn’t understand.

Watching the man carefully, he slips his hand into his pocket, through the discrete hole cut there. The case of leather is cool and smooth to the touch; he can feel his pulse, measured and steady, through his fingertips, as he pulls the knife out.

——

It doesn't take long. After, he doesn’t go back into the bar. He heads down the alley, loops around, and goes to the parking lot. He starts swaying a little once he’s reached the car, and has to steady himself on it. He texts Michael and Gavin that he’s outside, in the parking lot.

 **Michael** : Oh, NOW you’re texting back? Bout damn time

 **Michael** : Btw, Geoff says he did ask Ryan to join us after all

 **Michael** : What the fuck ever I guess

Ray sends a reply, shaking. His grandfather’s knife is back in its place. It feels like a lead weight.

 **Ray** : I’m at the car, whenever you’re ready

——

It was all a matter of bad luck.

The warehouse they hit is beachside, home to a cache of cargo Geoff fully intends to exploit, and damn it all if they weren’t clean about it: no witnesses, silent footsteps, no DNA, quick in and out...then a worker came back from his lunch in time to hit the alarm and get shot straight between the eyes. A clean shot, yes, but not fast enough. They went from being in the midst of a successful heist to a disaster in the making, bathed in flashing red light and a deafening mechanical scream.

Two minutes before they were swamped by the LSPD. Tops.

Except make it more like thirty seconds, with them barely outside and the sirens aren’t distant, they’re fast approaching. A block away at most.

The standoff will be brutal, if they stay. Options manifest: they have half the score, and the opportunity to bolt. Or they could plunder what’s left and take their chances. No one moves for a second.

Then, Geoff roars for them to run. 

Partway to the beach, Jack is hit in the leg and shouts as a jet of blood emerges from the wound. “Oh, for _fuck’s sake_ ,” Geoff bellows, at Jack, at the cop who got him, at God, no one knows, he only slings his gun so it rests on his back and grabs a hold of Jack. No hesitation. Like it’s second fucking nature. Protectiveness, pain, and fierce determination radiate off of him like heat.

The others hesitate, staring at him almost dumbly as Jack huffs painfully and Geoff gets an arm around his waist. “ _WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR_ ,” he shouts when he notices them, spit flying from his mouth. His eyes are wild, the color of the thinnest layer of ice. “ _GO!_ ”

So they do, because Geoff is their boss but also their guiding point in the chaos, their aether, as they stagger gracelessly toward the sand, guns pointed at the officers who emerge from behind the blazing building. And it works for a minute or two, cops drop and no one else gets hit, but Jack is audibly _wheezing_ and his blood is black like coal, running freely down his calf. 

There’s a stunning, collective moment of terror. They’re unaccustomed to their own pain, let alone the possibility of death. And why would they be? They’re the fucking Fake AH Crew. They’re practically gods, but the dark, viscous blood on Jack’s skin serves as a shocking reminder that they’re not quite there yet. 

Geoff, who’s in good shape but still gets tired, starts to lose steam, too, almost as quickly as he got it, and sooner rather than later he’s lagging considerably behind the rest of them while the sound of helicopter blades banks near the boardwalk.

“Oh God,” someone mutters—Ryan, by the sounds of things—as a police chopper aims a searchlight at them. 

“Geoff,” Michael says uncertainly. “Do I need to text Lindsay that I won’t be home for dinner tonight?”

Geoff scowls. In the setting sun, the sweat on his brow glistens. “No. Keep fucking going.”

Gavin casts an unconvinced look behind them, where an orchestra of sirens is rising. “Dad...maybe—”

Geoff grunts painfully then; his arms are physically straining beneath his suit jacket to shoulder Jack’s weight.

“Guys,” Ryan says, “either we sprint or we get out of here in body bags. _Now_.”

“That’s fine,” Geoff splutters. “Ray, cover us. Gavin will—”

“Geoff,” Jack wheezes, “for fuck’s sake— _leave me_. The score’s already so heavy. I’m only gonna weigh you down.”

No sooner had he said it does Geoff stop short, and the inferno is as alive in his eyes as it is roaring behind them.

“ _NO_ ,” he barks immediately. There’s a raw edge in his voice, and not from tiredness. “Do you hear me, Jack? I’ll be damned if I let you die.”

Jack winces. His blood is dripping steadily and leaves a wet, red trail in the sand. “Geoff…” 

“Don’t _ever_ let me hear you talking like that again.” His voice is dangerously quiet. “Do you fucking understand me? We’re a family. We’ll find a way out of this—together. Now Ray: fucking take out that chopper.”

“I can take care of it, but more will come, Geoff,” Ray says. “Probably in the next two or three minutes.”

“I know. We have to drive fast if we wanna get of here.”

Ray nods, aiming for the pilot through the glass and executing him just as a round lands in the sand next to him. A lousy shot compared to his (then again, most are.) He watches the helicopter start to spin out of control; up on the boardwalk, people start screaming and pointing.

They break. Geoff and Jack still lag a few steps behind them, though not as slow as before, egged on by the possibility of death. The getaway car isn’t armored—an SUV with tinted window, nothing special—but it’ll work, and already the shouting of the officers is getting fainter.

“Who’s driving?” Gavin pants, leaning against the trunk.

Geoff still has the humor to go, “Not you.” Gavin almost smiles. “Michael. You remember that thing I said last week about respecting speed limits?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t.”

Michael nods once and takes the keys. “Got it.”

And then, from the shadows:

“Don’t move.”

The voice has a cool, familiar authority—a fucking cop, beside one of the poles with his gun drawn. Dark hair, dark eyes, expression darkened by the shadows falling from the pier. No one moves an inch.

Ray’s fingertips prickle. His gun, still hot from the shot he executed the pilot with, rests on his back.

But there’s something different about this one; the cop’s not holding his gun like he means to shoot them, with a firm grip or even an aimed barrel. More like it’s habit. Already, six pairs of shoulders—belonging to six men who are very accustomed to being pointed at with guns— are un-tensing.

Well.

Five, technically.

Because Ryan’s still very much hunched up, staring at the officer with about as much surprise as he can physically muster. The cop stares back with even less of it, his eyes devoid of anything other than arrogance and a grim brutality that’s only betrayed by the tremor at the corner of his mouth.

Bitterly, Ray wonders if they’re friends.

“Geoff Ramsey,” the cop pronounces. His voice is higher than it should be for someone of his appearance and age—mid-thirties probably, but with a baby face and a smug, boyish air. The grown version of the boy who put boogers in girl’s hair in elementary school and snapped their bra straps later on. He relaxes, gun going back into its holster like they’ve known each other for years. Geoff scowls.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Well, that’s a fucking first,” Geoff bellows sarcastically. “The whole city’s looking for me, jackass.”

“I’m not interested in arresting or killing you,” the cop says, lazy. Lax. He rolls his shoulders. “Just a chat.”

“Our groupies are cops now?” Michael barks, but the officer is coolly unfazed. He glances back at Ryan, whose gaze hasn’t budged an inch from him. 

“What?” Geoff looks between them. “Am I fucking missing something here?”

“You know him, Ryan?” Gavin asks.

“Knew,” Ryan deadpans.

“Oh, I knew him, alright,” the cop says casually. “Gave my career a bigass boost when I landed his ass in jail.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Geoff demands. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Sergeant Joel Heyman.” Cool as a cucumber, he leans against one of the boardwalk’s moldy posts. “Nice to meet you.”

Ryan smiles coldly. “Promotion, huh? Back then, you were just Officer Heyman.”

Joel returns the smile with stunning cruelty. “And back then, you just were James.” He stands up straight to stretch. “Los Santos had more career opportunities for both of us, I see.”

“Small fucking world,” Michael mutters.

Geoff is looking out toward the shoreline, where sirens still trill and warble, but Joel says, “Don’t worry about that. I told my men that you were headed north, toward Pillbox Hill. Most of them are long gone.”

They all stare at him with open awe.

“Why?” Gavin asks uncertainly. Joel just looks at him; Gav had unshouldered his rifle, fully prepared to waste Heyman when he wasn’t looking. There’s not much one can say to that.

“Do you want an autograph or something?” Geoff asks. 

“Oh, I want a something alright, but consider my services always on the house.” Joel flits his eyes between them. “How many cops do you have on your payroll?”

Geoff blinks, stunned.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Jack says, incredulous enough to forget about his pain. But the smirk on Heyman’s face says he most certainly isn’t. “You wanna _sign_ with us?”

“More or less, yes.”

“This has gotta be a fucking setup,” Michael says, gun cocked. “You don’t have to play with your food first, fuckface.”

Joel raises his hands innocently. “No playing, friend. I’m really interested.”

Gavin snorts. “Bull. He’s probably undercover.”

“If me calling off my squad doesn’t prove I’m not, I can find another way.”

“Yeah. They all can.”

Joel blows out an annoyed breath. “You’re only midway up the ladder but once you have an in with the police, it’s a matter of weeks before you’re at the top.”

“Who said I wanted to be at the fucking top?” Geoff snaps. “What if I’m very happy being in my comfy little midway zone?”

Joel cracks a smile. “What gangster _doesn’t_ want to be at the top?”

“I’m not a gangster, fuck you very much. I’m a guy having a good time with his family.” Geoff pauses. Then, for good measure: “So fuck you.”

“Oh, bull.” Joel’s eyes twinkle with hot, livid madness. There’s an uncontrolled savagery lingering just beneath the man’s exterior, like a raging river below a layer of ice. Almost like he can’t hold it in. “Why were you digging into a weapons warehouse? Not for a ‘good time.’ You intended to sell that cache, so let’s not fucking pretend I didn’t know that. You want money and power, I want in. It’s a good deal, Ramsey.”

“Geoff,” Michael deadpans, “fucking don’t. This is just another LSPD attempt at landing our asses in jail.”

“Are you shitting me?” Joel laughs it off. “You think those _morons_ have the organization required for an undercover op? They would have taken you down years ago if they did.”

“Listen, pal,” Geoff says, “if you think you’re the first nobody coming to me looking for work, you’re dead wrong. And second of all, let’s say I _did_ buy this little ‘I hate my own fucking organization’ schtick—you’re shit outta luck, because we’re not hiring.”

“Why?” Joel flicks a cool gaze toward Ryan. “Because you recently added him to your payroll?”

Ryan’s hand resting on his gun in that moment is so out of character for him, because it’s so _obvious_ —as open of a threat as anything he could have said in words. Joel regards the gesture calmly.

“Look—all I’m saying is, I’m interested, and you could use a line into law enforcement.” Joel cocks an eyebrow. “I could offer you a lot. Drugs, guns, power, girls, immunity, getting you out of clusterfucks like I did today...you name it, I’m your guy.”

Jack, who’s normally the epitome of collected, surprises everyone when he spits out, “Don’t you ever fucking assume to know what we could ‘use.’”

Joel sighs heavily. Like he’s just so _tired_. 

“You know what?” Geoff says, eyes slitting. “I might have considered you, but I get the sense that you’re just a prick. And I already have enough of those to deal with on a daily basis.”

“Shouldn’t that be a job prereq, then?” 

“Fuck you,” Geoff snarls. The mouth of his gun arcs in a subtle, solid threat. “You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

“ _Finally_ ,” Michael sighs, reaching for his gun. But the tattooed hand on his arm stops him.

“Don’t fucking bother. Last thing I need is another reason for the LSPD to hate me.”

Joel smirks. “You’re welcome for saving your ass.”

Setting his jaw, Geoff signals for them to go.

Behind them, Heyman laughs as they pile into the car. “Forty-eight hours. Give me a call if you’re interested.”

——

The drive back to one of their safehouses is a mad scene.

“Geoff,” Michael is saying, at about the same time as everyone else, “just fucking don’t, this is a setup, they _know_ they can’t get a handle on you and this is the only way how, don’t fucking bite—”

“But, Michael, maybe we could use—”

“I’m sorry, Gavin, was I fucking speaking to you—”

“I’m just saying, boi, the guy was pretty bloody convincing for someone who—”

“ _Of course he was bloody convincing, you fucking idiot, they kinda have to be when they’re trying to frame some_ —”

“ _Both of you SHUT THE HELL UP_ ,” Geoff bellows, and they fall quiet. His eyes, scanning the traffic ahead of him, are distant and deep in thought. 

Over the speakers, Burnie clears his throat. “Am I free to talk now?”

“Shoot.”

“So what did he offer you, exactly?”

“A position in our regime, or...gang.” Geoff frowns. “Whatever we are.”

“He just came up to you and propositioned you?”

“Sort of. Yes. No.” Geoff rubs the side of his nose. “Yeah, more or less.”

Burnie pauses. “I don’t know. That sounds too unorchestrated and unconvincing to be a ploy. For him to just...walk up to you and ask, in a secluded location with no one else around. No sergeant would have a UC do something so dangerous.”

“Apparently he _is_ the sergeant,” Gavin says.

“He arrested Ryan,” Geoff says. There’s humor in his voice, despite a neutral expression. “Like, twenty years ago or whatever. Pretty crazy.”

“There might be a connection.”

“That’s a hell of a coincidence if there isn’t,” Michael offers. Something lurks beneath his tone that he doesn’t bring to the surface. An accusation? 

“It shocked the shit out of me,” Ryan says. 

“Yeah, but…” Geoff begins. His mouth presses into a line. “Fuck. I don’t know. This all seems way too fucking much for one day. I’d rather haul our score home.”

“He seemed confident,” Jack says, back to his easygoing self after enduring a yell-y, chaotic, messy bullet extraction in the back of the SUV while Geoff wove in and out of highway traffic. “Like, _really_ confident. Like we couldn’t possibly say no. It was weird as shit, especially considering the guy didn’t exactly offer us anything.”

“Except his position as an officer?” Burnie says.

“I guess.”

“To be frank, it’s your decision. The fact that he gave you his real name, though, might indicate that he’s seriously offering. A responsible undercover mission would never give a real name.”

“Let’s say he’s legitimate, then,” Geoff muses. “Would we even want to _hire_ him? We’re doing pretty well for a six-man outfit.”

“I would, to be honest. Having a dirty cop on your payroll could do you wonders.”

“But having a UC on us could end spell the end,” Michael mutters. 

“I say tail him,” Jack pipes up. “Sit on him and see if he reports back to anybody. It’s too early for him to be in too deep, so he has to get back to a superior, assuming he really is undercover—oh Michael, don’t fucking look at me like that—so say you give him an initiation like Ryan’s, a target or whatever, and have two of us sit on him the whole time. If he does it, I’d say he’s legit, but of course if he tries to contact someone and have his cop friends waiting for us when we get there then, well...”

Geoff’s nodding, warming to the idea. “What does R&R think?”

“R&R?” Burnie goes, confused.

“Don’t ask.”

“When I knew him, Heyman was bloodthirsty,” Ryan offers. “Even as a small town cop, the guy had a jacket full of brutality and excessive force charges. He’s definitely ruthless enough, not to mention he’s got an in and God knows how many years of experience, but he’s also a gifted liar. If he’s looking to sink our ship, he very well could. He doesn’t need to be undercover to want to end us.”

“Was he corrupt, or at least headed that way?” Burnie asks. His voice crackles in the speakers as they hit a bump.

Ryan smirks. “Absolutely. When he brought me in, he’d planted evidence to send me to prison.”

“Too bad you confessed first,” Jack says. Ryan smiles to himself.

Geoff nods sagely. “Ray, my boy? Thoughts? Opinions? Political statements?”

Ray gazes out the window at the road as it blurs past. “I think it’s risky, Geoff.”

“Fair enough.”

“I agree with Jack, but if he’s playing us, we could get fucked. Like, permanently.”

Ryan’s looking into the rearview when Ray makes the mistake of looking up, so he quickly jerks his gaze back to the pink rifle in his lap. “Just saying. This could either be a really great opportunity or he could fuck us over for good. I don’t think it’s worth it. I’d rather we go to the cop than have them come to us.”

“Okay.” Geoff’s nodding more. “Okay. I definitely see what you’re saying—”

“Wait,” Ryan interrupts.

“Yes?”

There’s a significant pause, during which Ray sneaks a glance and sees Ryan’s profile. His face is illuminated like he discovered the Holy Grail, or Atlantis, or he’s about to jump across the center console and lay a serious case of road head on Geoff—who the fuck knows anymore. Even Ryan’s _excitement_ is creepy and enshrouded in mystery.

“I think we should test him.”

Ray’s fists clench minutely. Because it went from _gosh I don’t know_ to _I’m gonna disagree with Ray cuz fuck that guy._ ’Course. _’Course._

“Of course,” he repeats aloud. Ryan ignores him.

“Jack’s right. We need to give him a task that, if he falters or hesitates in any way, would reveal that he’s playing for the wrong side.”

“But UCs can kill,” Michael says skeptically. “Like, suppose he does go through with it. So what? He could still be playing us.”

“I know,” Ryan replies, and the insanity is hot and alive in his voice. The atmosphere in the car instantly chills over. “That’s why we don’t give him a murder initiation.”

There’s a pause, because there’s danger lurking in every _syllable._

“Then what?” Gavin asks hesitantly.

Ray can’t even see Ryan’s face fully, but just _feels_ how it lights up.

——

Once he’s past yelling, “ _Holy fuck WHAT that’s fucking_ insane _oh my God Ryan Haywood you truly are an evil genius how do you even think of this shit I LOVE IT_ ”, Geoff clears his throat. And agrees.

——

Ray isn’t expecting to be as angry as he is. Then Ryan stops the car.

“That was quite the change of heart,” he remarks as he unbuckles. After stowing the booty at the primary safehouse, and enduring a hesitant-to-agreeing-to-horrified-to-ecstatic phone call with Burnie, he’d wanted to hitch a ride with Michael and Gavin to the location in downtown, but they were all over each other, Michael’s confession about being “worried” about Gavin apparently being a distant, five-hour-old memory. So Ryan had to do—and what a miserable-ass twenty-five minutes out to Sandy Shores that was.

“How do you mean?” Ryan asks tiredly. 

“You know.” Ray keeps his voice even. “Deciding to jump a cop in.”

“Oh.”

Ray scoffs at that. _Oh._ As if Ryan had somehow _forgot._

They get out of the car, parked on the private dirt road leading to the safehouse, and Ryan goes, “I like you, Ray, but have you ever considered that not everything I do has to do with you?”

“Fuck you, honestly,” Ray replies. “I know you’re determined to fuck me over, but that was fucking _idiotic_ , convincing Geoff to let a cop initiate.”

Ryan’s eyes are cool. “I’m not determined to fuck anyone over, least of all you.”

“No, you’re just interesting in the fucking part, right?” Ray asks loudly. Ryan doesn’t budge.

“Are you in on it? With Heyman?”

“Ray.” Ryan’s wince is minute, but something. Ray will take it. “Come on. You _know_ that sounds crazy.”

“Is it, Ry? Fuck, the way the two of you were eye-fucking each other, _you_ could be a cop for all we know, or this could all be some elaborate ploy to dethrone Geoff. Who fucking knows? No wonder you don’t talk about yourself. So many skeletons in your closet, you’re practically running a fucking graveyard.”

Ryan eyes Ray like he’s lost it. Ray clenches his hands into fists. That look from _Ryan_ of all people is ironic as shit. 

“I didn’t tell Geoff I wanted Joel in just to make you look like a fool,” Ryan says measuredly, dashing two fingers of his chest. “Cross my heart.”

“Doesn’t mean much, coming from you.”

“I don’t expect you to believe me, but that’s my truth.”

“Haven’t you humiliated me enough?” Ray demands, eyes suddenly wet. He reaches out to—shove Ryan? Hit him? Jerk him off?? God he doesn’t fucking know anymore, he just wants to do _something_ , just wants to hurt Ryan the way that Ryan _destroyed_ him, but Ryan catches Ray’s clumsy wrists so smoothly that it might even look like that’s what Ray was aiming for.

_Was it?_

Ray makes a half-hearted attempt to yank away, but already Ryan’s cool, calloused hands are making him weak—one touch, holy shit, talk about withdrawal because all it’s taking is _one touch_ for him to get his fucking fix—as they caress the thin flesh of his wrists.

“Let go,” Ray says hoarsely.

Ryan pins him with his eyes, darkly intense. “Whatever you think is going on here, Ray, you’re wrong. About all of it.”

“Like _fuck_ I am—”

“I never meant to hurt you, or humiliate you, or do anything adverse toward you, on my _life_ ,” Ryan says and, if Ray didn’t know better, it sounds like a plea.

“I don’t believe you,” Ray shouts. “You hear me? I _don’t_.”

Ryan holds firm. 

God. His fucking eyes—they just won’t. Let. Ray. _Go_.

“In the theatre,” Ryan says, like Ray knew he would, but his heart still beats hopelessly faster, “I overstepped my mark. I know that. But, for what it’s worth, I’m not sorry.”

Ray stops breathing.

“And,” he continues, “I would do it again.”

“You’re not trying to humiliate me, Ryan? _Really?_ ” Ray gives a determined tug, and frees his hands. Ryan’s skin has left imprints, like bruises, on his flesh, that Ray longs to rub away. 

“No,” Ryan says. “God, no. If you want to be embarrassed by it, by all means, do, but just know that there’s nothing that happened in that theatre that you need to feel embarrassed about.” His eyes shadow with lust. “Absolutely nothing.”

Ray’s fingers flash toward the handgun in his jeans, but hesitate.

Ryan doesn’t even flinch. His eyes never, not once, for even a split second, look away from Ray’s.

“I would’ve killed for you earlier,” Ryan breathes.

Ray’s quiet for a moment. Almost uncomfortably, he says, “Why didn’t you?”

“Because you didn’t want it. I could tell: you thought you did, and maybe you could have, but you were hesitating. But if you’d asked…I would’ve. Without second thought, even if I’d gotten caught, I would have killed that man.” Ryan pauses, his voice low and scratchy. “And I would have done ten thousand times worse to whomever you let beat you up at during that mission a while back. _So much_ fucking worse.”

Ray swallows, figuring it’s now or never. “Did you fuck Meg?”

“No,” Ryan says without hesitation. 

“Then why, Ryan? You had your hands all over her back at that bar. You kissed her like you planned to fucking propose to her. _Why?_ ”

“She’s a bank manager, but she’s bored. Itching to stir up trouble.” Ryan shrugs. “I have plans,” he says simply.

“To what?” Ray snorts. “Flip her? Or court her?”

Again, Ryan shrugs. “You’ve already said you don’t believe me, Ray. And that’s fine—you don’t have to. But that’s my truth.”

Ray just stares him. Ryan’s face is blank, but open, like the simplest of doors. And if Ray didn’t know Ryan—if he gave into that aching in the corner of his heart, _just a little_ , he’d believe him.

But he knows better.

“You’re fucking with me.”

The slightest of smirks springs on Ryan’s face, then it’s gone. “I won’t deny that.”

“Fuck you,” Ray barks. “You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re fixated on me and you’re trying to get in my head.”

Ryan’s eyes cool. Softly, he says, “I’m already there.”

Ray stiffens.

“I’m in your head,” Ryan says, “as much as you’re in mine.”

“ _Enough_ ,” Ray whispers, and it clearly startles Ryan—to hear Ray _pleading _. All at once, his eyes have also dampened. It’s quite the sight.__

__“Can’t you see that, Ray? You wanted to _attack_ me for disagreeing with you on something _stupid_. You thought I did it just to _spite_ you. Can’t you see how much you want it?” Ryan frays a bit, before clearing his throat. “How much you want _me_?”_ _

__“Fucking _please_ , Ryan. End this.”_ _

__But Ryan shakes his head. His tone is just as wretched as Ray’s. “I can’t.”_ _

__Silence stretches out, long and uncomfortable between them. The city echoes distantly, bustling and bumping in spite of the tense wire they both stand on._ _

__“No more,” Ray says, “or I tell Geoff.”_ _

__Ryan snorts. “C’mon Ray.” He’s speaking gently and warmly, as if consoling a little kid. “Michael hits on Gavin all the time and Geoff never has diddly to say about that. He’s not our _dad_.”_ _

__“He’s our boss.”_ _

__“He’d tell me to stop if you didn’t like it, which we both know isn’t true,” Ryan says, smooth and effortless, like a flow of water. Ray’s body breaks out in uncomfortable prickles. “The entire Crew, including him, thinks it’s hilarious.”_ _

__Ray’s breathing goes ragged. “You’re _obsessed_ and _stalking_ me—”_ _

__“Words, words, words.” Slowly, Ryan smiles. “Why did you let me blow you in that movie theatre, Ray?”_ _

__“Lapse in judgement,” Ray snarls, his face beet red._ _

__“Bull. You don’t get lapses in judgement. You’re a sniper, for Christ’s sake.” Ryan’s eyes look him up and down. “Tell me why.”_ _

__“Because I liked it, okay?” Ray bites out. Ryan’s face doesn’t change. As if expecting this all along. “I fucking liked it. There. That what you wanted,_ asshole _?”_ _

__“For you to admit that you liked it?” Ryan laughs shortly. “Hardly. I already knew that.”_ _

__Ray’s face, heated, only gets hotter._ _

__“What I want you to admit, I know you won’t. I know you won’t let go of your pride. I know, if you had your way, you’d do this song and dance until the end of time. So I’ll make it simple for you.” Ryan pauses._ _

__Then he gives Ray a heart attack:_ _

__“I want you. There’s something about you, I can’t explain it...but I_ crave _you, Ray. I want you like I want my next fucking_ breath _. And sometimes, I think to myself, I see something in your eyes, or your expression, just these fleeting little moments where you might want me back, and it drove me crazy because I wasn’t sure. But now I know: you do. I know it, and somewhere deep down, you know it, too. Even if you can’t admit it, which is fine. Even if you spend every waking moment trying to convince yourself I’m this delusional psycho that you have no business wanting. It’s all fine. Just know that the only one I want is you, no one else, and that won’t change.” Ryan stares at him. “Okay?”_ _

__Ray’s throat is completely closed._ _

__“In the theatre…” A shudder visibly travels through Ryan, making Ray’s heart race. “God. There was this one moment, right before I stood to leave, that you were looking at me...it was like you wanted me to destroy you.” Ryan’s breathing dampens a little. “I fucking would have.”_ _

__“I know you would have,” Ray chokes out. He’s shaking, from head to foot. There seems to be a hand almost clenched around his throat._ _

__“Would you have wanted me to?”_ _

__Swallowing, Ray nods._ _

__“Oh shit,” Ryan whispers. “_ Do _you want me to?”_ _

__“I…”_ _

__“_ Ray _,” Ryan forces, through gritted teeth. He advances a step, like a mountain moving. “I swear to God...I feel like, every second with you, I’m gonna_ fucking _lose it. I need to_ know _.”_ _

__Ray swallows again. His throat’s gone dry. “I don’t know.”_ _

__Ryan just looks at him, not confused or hurt or angry or much of anything that Ray knows how to name, really._ _

__“I’m sorry,” Ray says uselessly, because there’s not much else he can think to say. He wants to be angry, goddamnit, he wants to be so fucking_ bad _but he’s_ never _seen Ryan like this, ever. He feels like he’s never truly seen Ryan upset, if that’s what this even is—the closest he’s ever come is vulnerability, and this is something so very different. It’s odd, sobering, and terrifying all at once._ _

__Ryan looks away finally, out toward the distant twinkle of the city. There’s still a touch of facepaint left on his face from the heist, but he didn’t paint on the full array tonight. He’s the sort of person that always manages to look contemplative in profile, Ray’s noticed. Like he’s horribly deep in thought._ _

__“I decided to flip Heyman,” he says after a moment, “because I want to flip Meg, as well.”_ _

__“Ryan, you don’t—”_ _

__“Have to justify myself?” Ryan meets Ray’s eye again, and chuckles. “Nah, it’s okay. I want you to know. And I’ve already told Geoff.”_ _

__Ray tries to smile. “Type A fucker, huh?”_ _

__Ryan smiles, too. “A little bit, yeah.”_ _

__“Well, good, honestly. I love Geoff, but he could use a good kick in the ass every once and awhile.”_ _

__Ryan snorts, and silence trippingly follows after that. It goes as it should: after a while, they open the Zentorno’s steel-plated trunk and stash the goods in the safehouse. Quick in and out, no talking._ _

__And it’s damn near unbearable._ _

__A couple of times, one will bump into or brush against the other, but it’s tense, and they don’t talk again, really. After they reach Ray’s apartment, Ryan is staring straight ahead, seemingly glowering at the road. He has a hand tightly clenched around the steering wheel, the other death-gripped on the gearshift, like he’s about to rip both clean off of the car. Even as Ray opens the door to get out, he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t say goodbye, or even look at him. He just leaves Ray there, standing on the sidewalk, watching as the Zentorno rips away into the night._ _

__Ray thinks about his grandfather’s knife, and the spot on his hand where he stabbed the toothpick into his skin, and the dozens of nights like this long ago where he cut himself open, whispering that he deserved worse._ _

__With the speeding Zentorno still in sight, he texts Ryan._ _

__**Ray** : I don’t know if you know this because they found the body a little while ago but after you left the alley, I killed that guy. I have a knife that I always carry during heist, the one I used to cut myself with. I made him beg for his life and then I slit his throat. It was fast_ _

__**Ray** : You were right. Maybe I could have wanted it, and as it turns out, I did_ _

__**Ray** : And you were right again, because you are SO in my fucking head right now, Ryan. You have been for God knows how fucking long but holy shit. You are. You fucking are. I don't know if that scares me. I don't think it does, and I don't know why THAT doesn't scare me either_ _

__**Ray** : All I can say is, what the fuck are you doing to me, because I NEVER want it to stop_ _

__He doesn’t wait for a reply. He puts his phone back onto Do Not Disturb, goes up to his apartment and sleeps without ever wanting to wake up._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next update will be MUCH speedier this time, I assure you! Thank you all so much for your patience with me.


	4. Pinnacle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ray finally rips the Band-Aid. All hell may or may not have broken loose.

**Michael** : Ok bud so last night Ryan texted me asking if I know where you are and now Lindsay is saying that she’s gonna meet up with you later  
 **Michael** : You uh...wanna tell me wtf is goin on???  
 **Ray** : I will at some point  
 **Ray** : About the Ryan thing  
 **Ray** : Like I’m not gonna fuck your wife, if that’s what you’re wondering  
 **Michael** : Well I assumed not lmao  
 **Michael** : Like your lame ass has any game  
 **Ray** : Fuck you, I could so fuck your wife if I wanted to. I might just do it now cuz you went and ran your mouth  
 **Michael** : Bahahahaha sure dude  
 **Michael** : Let me know when she calls the cops

——

**Lindsay** : Hey.  
 **Ray** : Yo  
 **Lindsay** : We still on for today?  
 **Ray** : Yeah I’m gonna head out in about an hour  
 **Lindsay** : Alright. See you soon.

——

Ryan’s outside when Ray opens his door.

Ray wants to be surprised, but he really isn’t. If anything, he was _more_ shocked and horrified when his door didn’t fly inward—hell, he was up half the night just _waiting_. And he doesn’t feel like he was wrong to. Like...thus far, Ryan has had a pattern of flagrantly disregarding his personal space, particularly when Ray’s at home. 

Ryan’s not asleep when Ray opens up, but he’s not awake either. He’s propped up on the opposite wall, head absently turned to the side. When the door opens, he rubs his eyes, looking more messy and vulnerable than Ray’s ever seen him. He hasn’t even changed out of his heisting clothes. 

The first thing Ray says is: “Wow. You really look like shit.”

Ryan laughs. “Thanks,” he says in a foggy voice. “You don’t look half-bad yourself.”

“I had a feeling you’d be out here.”

“I couldn’t get back here fast enough.”

“I slept on the couch for you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep a fucking wink. So we’re even.”

“No,” Ray says, “I mean, I slept in the living room because I was...waiting.”

Ryan raises a brow. His eyes are shadowed by dark circles, yet he still somehow manages to look like a supermodel. Not that Ray’s surprised. If smoking a blunt is a good look on Ryan, sleeplessness being a good look isn’t that far-fetched of an idea.

“For me?” Ryan says. 

“No, Geoff.” Ray scoffs. “Yes, you, dumbass. Come on, dude. You kind of have a thing for breaking into my house when you want something.”

Ryan tilts his head. “But you don’t like it when I do that.”

Ray sucks in a breath. “Not usually.”

There’s a pause, in which Ryan stares at him and Ray forces himself to stare back. The entire upper floor is always unnervingly quiet, even at the peak of rush hour—Ray can hear his own heartbeat.

“Why?” Ryan breathes at last. “Were you...hoping I would this time?”

“I’d be lying if I said no,” Ray says quietly. 

Ryan stares a little more, before nodding. He makes a soft noise. “I really like this little thing we going, Ray. You know that? I like it a _lot_.” He smirks. “Even if you frustrate the hell out of my sometimes.”

Ray nods.

“We should talk.” Ryan tilts his head back, eyeing Ray up and down. Maybe it’s the tiredness, but today he’s a raw, exposed sort of beautiful that’s so rare for him. Normally, he’s closed-off, or cold, or a door halfway shut. Openness is a good look for him. “Unless you’d rather not talk.”

Ray swallows, feeling a full-body, honest-to-God shiver go down his spine, all the way to his feet. “I have to get going, Ryan,” he manages throatily. 

Ryan’s eyes flick down to Ray’s car keys, dangling from his fingers. “Where you headed?”

“Somebody asked to meet me today.”

“Who?”

“Lindsay,” Ray say, because fuck it, he figures Ryan’s gonna find out eventually if he doesn’t tell. “Michael’s wife.”

Ryan chuckles. “I know who she is.”

“Yeah,” Ray says. “Apparently, she knows you, too.”

Ryan just smiles at that. “If you agreed to meet her, you should go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“I know you will. That’s the problem.”

“How? We have a lot to discuss, don’t we?”

“No,” Ray says past the knot in his throat, “I’d say we don’t.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Ryan’s voice is like a caress; Ray can practically feel it on his skin. “Maybe it’s already been decided.”

Ray clenches his keys that much harder.

“You are so bad for me,” he breathes.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. 

“I can’t think you around you. Not when you’re looking at me like that, or sound like that.” He pauses, breathing shakily. “You fuck with my goddamn head. You know that?”

Ryan just smiles. “You’re no good for me” Ray adds—and feeling unsure as to why he does. But it sounds right, coming out of his mouth. “You’re _dangerous_.”

“And yet you still want me,” Ryan says softly. 

Ray steels his back. “Nothing’s decided.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be back.”

Ryan glances behind him. “Aren’t you going to lock up?”

“No, dude,” Ray says. “Take a shower, have something to eat, whatever. I’m not leaving you out here like a fucking bum, no matter how much I’d rather not do that.”

Ryan smirks. “Why, Ray, I could kiss you for that.”

“Don’t fucking get ahead of yourself.”

——

It was Lindsay’s idea to meet at the café, which is a cozy, mom and pop coffeeshop off of Vespucci Beach. She’s picked a table far from the door, in the furthest corner from the door; her clothes are casual, a long-sleeved tee and black jeans versus the impossibly pressed suit he (up until now) thought she was eternally doomed to wear.

She gives him a small wave. On the table, he sees that she’s even ordered him a drink.

“How did you know I liked lattes?” he quips, picking up his cup. The foam has been marbled into, of all things, a _rose_ ; he lets out an incredulous laugh at that.

“What’s up?” she says.

“They know my favorite flower, too?”

She smiles. “No? That’s pretty funny.”

“I almost don’t wanna drink this now,” Ray says, right as he picks it up and takes a huge swig. “Buuuuut. Yolo.”

Her smile persists, but with much less energy. She’s taking tiny, bird-like sips of her half-drunk cappuccino now, almost like she’s completely uncommitted to drinking it. She probably is. Her eyes are distant and troubled.

“So,” Ray says after an uncomfortable silence, “what’s up?”

“You okay?” Lindsay replies instead. She looks down at his rumpled shirt, then at his five o’clock shadow. “You look tired.”

“Because I am.” He drinks his latte. “Long night. But don’t worry about me. This is about—”

“Yes,” she says. “James.”

Ray chuckles.

“Excuse me—Ryan is what he goes by now?” She grimaces. “ _God_. He thinks he can avoid his past by going by a different name? That’s so _pretentious_.”

“I’m taking you know, uh...James.”

Lindsay nods. “Very well.”

“Small world,” Ray offers, trying to be casual, or funny, or anything other than serious. After everything that’s happened with Ryan recently, the last thing Ray wants when talking about him is to be serious about it. Not when it doesn’t have to be that way.

“Michael told me that he had a new associate,” Lindsay explains, tracing a painstakingly manicured finger across the ceramic rim of her cappuccino cup. Her nails seem to be the only physical evidence of her high-profile career. “Of course, he called them ‘Ryan’, so I thought nothing of it. Seeing him at that bar was like seeing a ghost.”

“Yeah, he about reacted that way, too.”

She nods. “After that night, he texted me. Apparently he’d asked Gavin for my number or something. He said, ‘It was good to see you again’, which is how I knew I wasn’t the only one who was being forced to take a walk down memory lane. Not that I expected him to forget or anything.” She lifts her eyes, looking at Ray. “He seems to have taken a personal interest in you.”

Ray nearly lets out a howling laugh. “You have _no_ idea,” he says, mouth twitching.

“That’s why I texted you.” She pauses. “I couldn’t talk with Michael about this. I don’t think he’d understand. He thinks he knows James, but he doesn’t. Probably not as well as you do.”

“Probably.”

Softly, she says, “I grew up with James in San Andreas.”

Ray, in the midst of slurping his latte, stops.

“We were neighbors, in fact. I lived three houses down from him.” She smirks, but it’s half-hearted. “Humble beginnings.”

“Wow,” Ray says, dumbfounded. He had very few expectations for this conversation to begin with—but that honestly stunned him. 

“Everyone in town knew him and his father intimately well, not just me. Even in that small, shitty place, they were the talk of the town, that’s how bad it was. I guess in a lot of ways I grew up with him. Went to grade, middle, and high school with him...until he got arrested, anyways.”

“By Heyman.”

Her eyes widen. “Yeah. How did you…”

“Long story. We ran into him randomly during a heist and he wants to work for Geoff.” Ray laughs awkwardly. “I swear, for a big city, it feels like I know like, one-fourth of the fucking population.”

“Funny,” she says with a dry smirk. “Michael didn’t mention it.”

“Probably because he was the opposite of on-board with it.”

She chuckles, then says, “Officer Heyman would be a better option than James, frankly. It’s a shame you hired him first.”

“Really? A corrupt cop over a hit man?”

“A corrupt cop,” she says, “over a monster.”

Ray falls quiet.

“Anyways, as I said, before he was arrested, we went to school together. He didn’t really have any friends, mostly because nobody wanted to get anywhere near his father—plus he was a strange kid. Quiet. Never smiled or moved his face much.” She flinches. “He came to school with lots of bruises, especially when he was younger. But I guess that was when he couldn’t fight back.”

Ray’s skin crawls, remembering the scars all over Ryan’s body.

“It wasn’t until high school that I got to know him. As we aged, he got more talkative, but nobody trusted him very much. He always held eye contact too much, got too close to people—our freshman year, he tried to ask a girl to prom, but she turned him down. The guy that she did say yes to...he never showed prom night. He didn’t come to school until Monday, where he wouldn’t even acknowledge her, not even to explain why he’d ditched her. So a lot of us thought James had done or said something to him, we just couldn’t be sure.” She shrugs. “But. Anyways. Not long after that, he started to pay attention to me. We both liked theatre of all things; I was in a play that year, and he did lights. He’d talk to me when there was downtime in rehearsals.”

She pauses again, smiling. “He was nice.”

Ray chuckles.

“He had this ability to make you just... _forget_ , you know? Like, I _knew_ about his dad, the whole town did, plus how everyone was weary of him, but the minute he started talking, I just forgot all about that.” (Ray has to bite his tongue to keep from blurting _God, same._ ) “I thought he was the sweetest boy in the world. He was a great listener—he seemed to really care about me,” she adds, wry. Her face is shadowed with disgust. “He was everything that a teenager girl wants in a boyfriend.”

Ray’s abandoned his latte now. He’s not sure he wants to hear about this—hearing about people Ryan’s fooled around with in the past—but, he figures if he could watch Ryan make out with Meg, he can survive this.

“Not that he was ever my boyfriend or anything. We never dated,” she continues. “We were kind of a...thing, the summer before our sophomore year. We kept it a secret, though—my decision, not his. Again, it was a small town. I didn’t want anybody to know that I was shacking up with the weird kid.” She smirks, scooping some foam out of her cappuccino cup onto her finger. “I was pretty shallow back then.”

“But you were what, fifteen? I’d say that’s pretty normal.”

“Yeah.” She smiles, and, just as quickly, it vanishes. “Anyways. That August, I remember coming home one day from rollerskating, and James was waiting on my doorstep, something he’d never done before. I was almost terrified of my parents seeing him, before I remembered that they had gone to the city for the weekend. So it was just me and my sisters, home alone. Frankly, that scared me more.”

She looks into his eyes, holding him there. “Do you know what he told me?”

Ray’s throat tightens in anticipation, fearing the worst. “What?”

Lindsay turns her head, as if to check to see if anyone’s watching. Then she leans forward.

“He told me,” she whispers, “that he’d killed his father. He’d stabbed him, after strangling the prostitute who was also in their house.”

And Ray breathes out slowly because, that’s _it_? One of the first—and most fucked-up—things he ever learned about Ryan? He’s instantly flooded with relief. 

But Lindsay’s shaking.

“Here was this boy who everyone knew was a little weird, who had made me believe he was so kind and gentle; he’ said to me, ‘I just killed two people and was wondering if you wanted to come with me to get cigarettes.’ And it was so _casual_ , too. Like it was some kind of fucking game. And when I told him no, I wasn’t going with him, he got scary. He got up in my face, demanding to know if I was chicken, if I was afraid. He asked me if I was going to call the police when he left. Then he smiled and told me he didn’t care, that he _hoped_ he’d get caught.” She swallows. “My cat had gone missing in the beginning of the summer, around mid-June. He told me he’d killed her—and then he told me where the body was, since he was going to jail soon, anyways. He really didn’t care at all.”

Ray blinks. Lindsay’s visibly upset, clenching and unclenching her fists on the table. Her eyes are foggy, in another time. And why wouldn’t they be? Christ, anybody _normal_ and _sane_ would be horrified by what Ryan’s done. Screw feeling relieved. Ray’s appalled—with _himself_. He _should_ be horrified, yet meanwhile, all he could think was: _that’s it?_ Holy fuck.

“He went to that convenient store alone,” she continues, absently touching her cup again. “It was like a bandaid had been ripped, because apparently he shot the cashier, too. And when the cops came for him, he confessed immediately. Like...no hesitation. He was completely cold. I don’t know if he wanted to be found or what, but...the trial was all over TV and the papers. As you can imagine. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened in that town. Still is, probably.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Ray whispers.

She watches his face, suddenly even more serious than she was before. Slowly, she says, “Are you interested in him, Ray?”

He sputters. “ _What?_ ”

“I hate to be direct. But I have to know, because that’s what I’m trying to tell you: it’s all an act. I knew the moment I sat down on that barstool that night that there was something between the two of you. And I couldn’t go on in good conscience, thinking for even a second that you believed his lies.”

Ray can’t speak.

“Are you, though?” She nearly whispers it, as if it’s some dirty secret (and it is in a way, isn’t it?) “Are you interested?”

His mouth opens. He wants so desperately to tell her the truth, and to lie at the same time. He should have known, from the moment he sat down, that he wasn’t going to give her the reaction she was looking for. 

“I…”

“ _Ray_ ,” she whispers urgently, leaning forward suddenly. Ray feels his heart hike its way into his throat. “ _Don’t_ fall for it. He’s a natural-born liar. A fucking _con_ artist since _birth_. You _can’t_ trust him, no matter what he says. Okay? I liked him, too, before I knew what he was. And once I—”

“You don’t have to warn me,” Ray blurts. 

She just looks at him, fluttering her lashes a little. Around them, the café quietly bustles. Ray hates to do this, too, like, _really fucking hates to do this_ , but he can’t bear to sit here anymore pretending that he’s learning something. As fucking pathetic as that might be. 

“I know he’s not the...best person in the world.” He pauses to chew on his lip. “I was the one who read his file before we jumped him in. So I...I know what he’s done. I know about his dad and I know about the hooker, too. He told me, actually.”

“...I see,” she says, without any tone or inflection. It’s impossible to decipher, and chagrins him that much more.

“In our line of work, we never expect our coworkers to be top of the line people. You know? Even though Ryan’s kind of the worst out of all of us, it’s just…” Ray trails off. He’d said it to stimulate conversation, but she’s quiet, so they’ve reached legendary levels of awk. 

He clears his throat, feeling useless now. “I’m really sorry he killed your cat.”

“He didn’t,” Lindsay says. “He lied. She came back a week later.”

It’s Ray’s turn to say, “Oh.” She just smiles sadly, and he bites the inside of his cheek, feeling like an asshole then for not reacting more to what she’s said, for not clutching his chest, for not gasping in horror. It doesn’t sit well in his stomach at all, nor does the disappointed, concerned look on her face.

She fidgets a little, turning to look at the paintings on the wall. Driven by the uncomfortable tension, Ray blurts, “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” she says, then smirks at him, which he’ll take as a sign that she’s not angry with him. It floods him with relief.

“Does it bother you, that Michael kills people?”

“No.” She pauses, before raising a dry eyebrow. “But I guess you could say I have experience with that sort of thing.”

Ray wants to smile, too. But his face feels numb.

“He hid his job from me, at first. I thought he was an electrician when we first started dating.” She chuckles. “The richest electrician in the fucking _world_ , apparently, but I still believed him. Until I started finding the ridiculous amounts of cash he hid around our apartment. And once I found out—I got used to it, I guess. The idea of being married to somebody who steals and murders for a living.”

“With Ryan.” Ray clears his throat. “They’re both in the same field.”

She tilts her head a little, but something in her eyes says that she knows exactly where this is going. 

“Why is he different from Michael?”

She gives him a hard stare that, under any other circumstances, would make his blood run cold. Now he’s just tired. Just waiting for her to get angry, because maybe that’s what he deserves. 

“Let me ask you this, Ray,” she says. “Can you _honestly_ say that you could see Michael murdering two people in cold blood, for no reason, and then talking about it like he’s describing the weather?”

Ray bites his lip, first looking at her, then at his latte cup. At the table next to them, a neurotic-looking man dumps the contents of his briefcase—almost all Polaroid photos—onto the tabletop. 

“No,” Ray finally admits. “Not really.”

“I won’t tell you how to live your life,” she says. “But I just think you should be careful.”

“Right.”

Lindsay sighs, cracking her knuckles. “This probably could have been avoided if I’d just asked Michael how much you knew, huh?”

He makes a noise at the back of his throat. She sighs again.

“Right. Sorry, then. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

Ray laughs tonelessly. He doesn’t like the way she says it—like he’s a lost cause. Like there’s nothing she can do to sway him. But it’s kinda true, so he just lets it go. 

“Well.” She pushes back from the table. “You probably have other things to get to. I should let you go.”

He shrugs. “Nah. My life’s pretty boring outside of the Crew.”

“Still,” she says. “I’ll get going.”

“Okay,” he says, swallowing. “Thank you for the drink.”

She nods, looking away again. Then, “I need to ask you one more thing.”

“Okay.”

“Did Michael tell you about what happened with Gavin?”

Ray’s breath catches. “Yeah.”

Lindsay nods again. “Right.” Her mouth ticks a little at the corner. “Kind of sad, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that—so he tells her as much. It makes the saddened look on her face grow.

“I know. I’m sorry for asking.” Her brow furrows in the middle. “I just don’t know what to do about it, is all. I guess I was hoping you could tell me.”

He wishes he could. He wishes, in a lot of ways, that he’d gasped and cried and thanked her for telling him the truth about Ryan—for _warning_ him. He wishes he could give her what she wants, that this wasn’t more or less for nothing.

But he knows now, clearer than he’s ever known:

Nobody can save him.

——

On the way home, Ray decides to run every errand he can possibly think of—even ones he honestly doesn’t need to run. He stops at the grocery store, contemplating which guava looks fresher for about ten unnecessary minutes before leaving empty-handed. Then he stops at a dry-cleaning place, despite having never had anything dry-cleaned or pressed in his entire life, and emphatically apologizes for “having the wrong place” to the sour-faced woman behind the counter. He also stops at a fast food joint in South Seoul, in spite of his definite lack of hunger, scanning the menu and asking as many questions as he can think of it (he’s surprised that, when he leaves without making a single purpose, he’s not pelted in the back with ketchup packets). And he’s too tired to deny himself the reason for his denial—of how much he’s avoiding talking to Ryan, despite the _You done?_ text looming on his phone.

He also stops at the bank in downtown, despite it being way the hell out of the way. Like, an entire twelve minutes’ walk out of the way. But fuck it, he actually has a check to deposit, from one Geoff Ramsey from forever ago, for “ _being such a kickass employee, that’s why._ ” The sum printed on the line is to the tune of $100,000.

Christ. Only Geoff.

The teller at the window, a blonde so tall that she overtakes him by a good four inches, tries to subdue to widening of her eyes as she accepts the check. Then she looks at him, and the additionally arching of her drawn-on brows tells him that he’s been recognized. But luckily, she doesn’t press it, and in a flute-like voice, she tells him that the funds should be available by end of day today. Ray flashes her an uncommitted smile as thanks before stepping away from the window.

Then, behind him, a familiar voice cries out, “Ray!” And he’s about to be confused, too, because really, _again_ with this? It’s not like he has _fans_ or anything—leave that shit to Michael and Gavin.

Before he remembers _why_ the voice sounds so familiar.

He turns, to see Meg Turney step out from behind the counter. She looks like a different woman altogether, her hair pinned into a stylish updo, and her (as Ray knows) banging body dressed down in an immaculate black suit. She gives him her megawatt smile and a dainty little wave, too.

Oh God.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi! How _are_ you?” she says, in a positively _oozing_ tone like she’s known him for years. The girl’s pretty, but she’s got that whole bright-eyed, enthusiastic bank teller attitude going on—which Ray can’t normally tolerate even on _good_ days. 

He shrugs. “I’m alright. Good, I guess. You?”

“I’m good, I’m good. I actually just stepped out on my lunch.”

“Oh,” he says, actually wishing now that he hadn’t decided to stall because apparently he knows _everybody in the fucking city_. “I actually can’t stick around for long, if that’s okay.” 

“Oh, of course.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Just wanted to say hi. I almost didn’t recognize you, if it wasn’t for that hoodie.”

He glances down at the—frankly—disgusting lavender-colored fabric. “It’s like...my _thing_ , huh?”

She giggles. “Yeah, kinda. Like, if they could put up a symbol to summon you, it’d probably be that hoodie.”

“Or a rose,” he says, smirking. “Fuck you, Batman. Hoodieman and/or Roseman is where it’s fucking _at_.”

Meg lets out a laugh that rivals Ryan’s in musicality, and Ray can’t believe he’s actually smiling and _comfortable_ talking to her considering, one of the last times he saw her, she was staggering with Ryan into Ray’s apartment at three AM. Small miracle.

“Well, Ray,” she says, “I should probably let you go. But I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

“I’m sure.” He pauses then, scanning her face. The reddish glasses, her eye makeup, her small, freckly nose. “Let me ask you something,” he says. 

“Of course.”

Ray glances over her shoulder, then flicks his eyes back to her. He’s sure to speak softly. “What exactly did Ryan offer you?”

Her brows go up in surprise. He expects her to get angry, or annoyed. Or to glare at him, at the very least.

Then she replies, just as quietly, “An in, to start. I have connections to every branch that’s in Los Santos, and I think Geoff has been meaning to hit us for a while. Ryan wants me to help with that.”

Ray’s honestly stunned. “Damn,” he says with a laugh. “And you’re cool with that?” 

“Yeah,” she says, nonchalant. Behind her glasses, she rolls her eyes. “This job is dry as all fuck sometimes. What’s there to lose, y’know?”

He could laugh again at that. He nearly fucking does, too. “I don’t know. Your freedom? Your chances at a future? To list a few.”

“Please.” She quirks her mouth. “I’ve _seen_ how you guys live. If I have to take some risks to get there myself, then I will.”

Ray just shakes his head, slipping his card into his pocket. “Okay,” Meg says, crossing her arms across her substantial chest. “You’re shaking your head. What’s up? Think I’m crazy for wanting to do it?”

“It’s not that,” Ray says—even if it sort of is. He just looks at her, feeling a sad weight settle over his face. “Did you go to college?”

“I did.”

“Well, just in case you give a shit, my advice is this: stay on the path you’re on now. Securing some top-dollar, college-level job, even if it’s fucking boring, is a _way_ better gig than this. Like…” Rubbing his neck, he blows out a breath. “We might be living high on the hog, but we’re all kind of losers deep down.”

“Really?” she says, and not unkindly. “I think what you guys do is exciting.”

He smiles at her, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Between you and me, I know for a fact that anyone of us would give up our Crew position in a heartbeat to be a bank manager at a ‘dry as all fuck’ job.”

“Yeah?” she laughs. “Know any of them that would wanna trade?”

Ray just looks at her for a minute, chewing his lower lip. Then he says jokingly, “Sure. You wanna take Gavin’s job? You’d be doing us all a favor.’

She laughs again, and he forces himself to return it—or at least he tries to. But when he does, his face just aches.

——

**Ryan** : You done?  
 **Ray** : Omw now  
 **Ryan** : Wow. Long talk  
 **Ray** : No. I ran some errands  
 **Ryan** : Uh-huh  
 **Ray** : Yeah yeah, fuck off  
 **Ray** : I also ran into Meg  
 **Ryan** : And how is she?  
Ray: Oh, you know, giving up a bright future, stable career, and good life to become a two-bit criminal like us. The usual  
 **Ryan** : That’s my girl :)

——

Even with the door to the apartment unlocked, Ryan’s still waiting outside in the hall. He almost looks dutifully, sitting there quietly on the floor.

“My _God_ , dude,” Ray says when he reaches the top stair. Ryan turns his head to look at him. “Are you a vampire now? Do you need to be _invited_ in?”

“More like I was waiting for you to get back, if that’s _okay_ with Your Highness.” Ryan quirks his mouth. “First you accuse me of being a ghoul, then a vampire? Make up your damn mind, Ray.”

Ray wants to laugh, but the sound that comes out of his mouth is raspy and colorless. It suddenly feels like there’s a hand, tightly folded around his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, suddenly struggling to get his keys out of his pocket. “I just really can’t do this right now.”

Ryan’s starting to stand. “Ray?”

Ray fumblingly gets into his apartment, and slams the door behind him to lock it. He can feel Ryan get closer, as if he’s radiating his heat straight through the door. 

“Ray.” Ryan’s voice is smooth and velvety. He sounds eerily calm. “Let me in.”

Ray thumps his head on the door, eyes closed. “Go away,” he whispers.

“No. Not this time.”

He snorts, muttering, “When do you ever?”

“What happened? We needed to talk before you left, and now you can’t face me again. Why? What did she say to you?”

“It’s not that, Ryan,” Ray says, voice cracking. “I fucking wish it was, but it’s not.”

“Talk to me.”

“Just...let me—”

“God _fucking_ damnit, Ray,” Ryan forces suddenly, “open this fucking door or _so help me_ , I will come back with my minigun and fucking _blast it down._ ”

Ray doesn’t answer. Ryan blurts out, in a cracked voice, which signifies he can’t hold it in anymore:

“The texts.”

“Yes.”

“You _admitted_ it—”

“ _Yes_ , Ryan. Okay? Yes.”

“Oh _God_ ,” Ryan chokes out. “Open the fucking door. _Now._ ”

“No,” Ray whispers, and there’s a pause that follows. He can practically feel Ryan, pressed up against the door. The heat, the want, pulsing off of his body.

“Ray…” Ryan sounds to be trembling. At his sides, Ray clenches his fists so tightly that they _burn_. “Why won’t you let me in?”

It’s not a question of desperation. It’s spoken softly, as if Ryan knows a dark secret. Which he does, in a way, but it’s no secret. Not anymore.

“Because I don’t know if I want you near me right now.”

“Why?” Ryan persists, quietly. Near wordlessly. “What do you think I’ll do to you?”

Ray _shivers_ at that. Like, a full-body, from the tip of his head to the soles of his feet, honest to God _shiver_. He bites his lip. 

“Or, I guess I should say...what do you think you’ll _want_ me to do to you?”

“Nothing good,” Ray rasps.

“Open the door, Ray.”

“Lindsay told me about you, Ryan,” he says, louder. “She told me a _lot_.”

“And you already knew what you were getting into with me. You’ve always known, from day one. That’s not what’s stopping you.”

“No. What’s stopping me is that I don’t think it bothers me at all. And that _fucking scares me_ , Ryan.” Ray breathes in raggedly. “You’ve _changed_ me.”

“Right back at you,” Ryan says, sounding just—if not more—desperate.

“She told me that you’re a con artist. That I can’t trust you, no matter what you say.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Of _course_ I do,” Ray nearly _yells_. “And I fucking _hate_ it. I wish you were lying. I wish all of this was just an act, and I could go to bed and wake up tomorrow knowing that you never cared about me. But I can’t. I can’t.”

“Let me in,” Ryan whispers.

“Meg thinks that what we do is ‘exciting’,” Ray sneers. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this job turns you into a fucking _monster_.”

“Are you kidding? It _is_ exciting. That’s the most exciting _part_.” Ryan pauses; his breathing is audible past the door. “And I know you agree.”

Ray trembles. “I think, if I open this door, you’re going to hurt me.”

“Probably.”

“And I think,” he squeezes out, “I’d let you. I think I _want_ you to.”

“Oh?” Ray balls his fists up even tighter because _goddamnit_ , Ryan makes that one _syllable_ sound so fucking sensual. “Have you...thought about it before?”

“Yes,” he grits.

“How would I do it?” Ryan asks softly.

“I’m not letting you in, Ryan.”

“I’d do anything for you. I sat on a hard patch of ground for twelve hours for you. I’d fucking _kill_ for you. So whatever you want, Ray, I’m gonna fucking give it to you.”

“Leave me alone,” Ray whispers. “ _Please_. I need to—”

“What? You need to what? Think?” Ryan chuckles. “Oh, Ray. That’s not how we work, though, is it? We never quite think things through.”

“Well maybe we need to.”

Ryan pauses for a moment. Then he says, “If this door wasn’t here, you wouldn’t be able to walk for a week. And you wouldn’t want to, either. I’d make it so good that you’d _never_ want to leave.”

Ray swallows, his entire body flushing hotly. “I know. I believe you.”

“Does it scare you? How much you want it?”

“Yes. Shitless.”

“Good,” Ryan says, laughing quietly. “Okay. Good. Me, too.”

“I thought nothing scared you.”

“Well, this fucking does. God, when you texted that you didn’t know what I was doing to you…” Ryan laughs again. “Feeling’s mutual. I think we’re destroying each other, Ray. Or at least we’re going to. And I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Ray’s quiet, unsure of what to say. His heart is thumping with long, hard pumps of blood.

Then he unlocks the door.

Ryan, on the other side, looks stunned. His hair’s messy, likely from how much he’s been running his hands through it, and when he meets Ray’s gaze, his eyes glitter.

“I’m sorry,” Ray whispers.

“Don’t be,” Ryan says softly. 

“I’m not good at this.”

“You think I’m any better? The most I had was a failed, disastrous marriage.”

“Well, the most _I_ had was a one-sided, unrequited mess way back in the day. So you’re ahead of me, as usual.”

Ryan smiles gently, and the sight of it makes Ray’s chest warm.

“You look good, Ryan.”

“No, I don’t,” he snorts. “I look like shit. You said so yourself.”

“No,” Ray says, “you look good. You always look good. It’s kind of annoying.”

Ryan chuckles. “Cute.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Ray forces, sticking out his tongue. “Don’t even say that, dude.”

Suddenly, Ryan chuckles. “I just realized—Geoff’s gonna lose his shit.”

“Yeah,” Ray replies, licking his lips. Inevitably, Ryan’s eyes shoot to Ray’s mouth. “But I think this has been a long time coming, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I’d agree.”

“Still,” Ray muses, “maybe personal life really shouldn’t interfere with work life.”

“In our field, I’d say that’s a requirement,” Ryan says. His voice, this soft and at this proximity, makes all sorts of odd, excited sparks go off throughout Ray’s body. He looks Ray up and down. “Us being such a small group and all…”

Ray swallows. “Good point.”

“But maybe you’re right. I mean, after all…” Ryan smiles lazily. “We’re kind of _awful_ together.”

“Terrible.”

“Absolutely. It’ll never work.”

“It’ll be a disaster.”

“We’ll destroy each other.”

“We’ll be ruined.”

“Mmm.” Ryan swallows. “Glad we can agree on something.”

Trembling, Ray says, “It happens.”

“You gonna let me in?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Well,” Ryan says softly, “thank you for letting me have this at least.”

“M-maybe tomorrow,” Ray offers, and means it. He can tell that Ryan knows, too, based on the pleased crinkle of the corners of his eyes. 

“Whenever you’re ready. Shit, maybe I’ll move in, too.” Ryan smirks. “As you say, yolo.”

Ray frowns slightly. He can’t say he hasn’t considered the idea—hasn’t wondered what it would be like to have Ryan around in his apartment. But the thought, paired with the casual way Ryan prattles it off, makes his heart pound.

“We haven’t decided anything yet,” he says weakly. 

“Oh, I think we have. I think we sure as fuck have, Ray.” Ryan’s voice goes ragged. “You’re _mine_.”

Echoing in the hall, Ray’s words are reckless abandon.

“ _I am_ not _YOURS_.”

Ryan just smiles, and moves in, and just like that, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like it’s been a long time coming, he pushes Ray against the wall and they’re kissing.

They’re kissing.

They’re kissing, the slowest, longest, hottest kiss of Ray’s entire fucking life. The kind of kiss that was destined from the beginning. The kind that makes Ray’s head spin and blacks out the rest of the world like it never even mattered to begin with.

Ryan’s _good_ , but careful, too—not destroying Ray the way he seemed to have promised, but going slow, biting his lower lip and doing all sorts of soothing strokes with his tongue that shouldn’t even be fucking _legal_ , holy _fuck_. That blowjob be damned. Everything in the whole fucking world be damned.

Ray breaks away at least, sucking in air. “ _Wha—_ ”

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Ryan whispers, just as frantic, his breath all but _trembling_ on Ray’s lips. “ _What are you doing to me, Ray?_ ”

“ _Me?_ ” he breathes out, laughing. “What are you doing to _me_?” And they go back at it, falling back into step like they’ve been doing this to each other for years. Ray’s entire body feels welded to the wall, his limbs heavy as he lazily clings to Ryan. If he lets go, he’ll fall. If he lets go, he might have to remember things that aren’t Ryan, or this wall, or their lips together. And he doesn’t want to. 

“ _Oh God, Ray_ ,” Ryan whispers hoarsely, pulling away again, “ _please_ kick me out now or I’m going to take you inside and do something very, very _bad_.”

“I…” Ray swallows. His mouth is heavy, yet it feels light and empty without Ryan’s. “I’m...gonna sleep now. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ryan says raggedly, pulling back. His eyes are dark and full of something promising. Something chill-inducing. “Goodnight.”

“G-goodnight,” Ray whispers back, shaking. 

“Text me,” Ryan breathes. Ray can only nod and watch him go. He can only hold onto the wall, trying to commit the shape and taste of Ryan’s mouth to memory, as he desperately tries not to float away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm as big a fan of UST as anyone but...it's gotta reach a head at some point, right?
> 
> [huge breath out] Okay! I did some slight developments with Meg in this chapter, and will continue this in the next, as well as Joel's initiation into the Crew. Now that the R&R goobs are finally starting to work things out, the Crew's progression is about to be full steam ahead.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!


	5. Runaway Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ray REALLY rips the Band-Aid, Geoff throws the party of the century, trouble looms on the horizon, and this fic truly earns its Explicit rating. (PLEASE SEE AUTHOR'S NOTE BEFORE READING.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning in this chapter for: mentions of child abuse and self-harm.
> 
> Firstly, an important one: I've changed Michael and Lindsay's relationship in this story from married to friends (who almost became more) for now. Given the plans I have for Gavin and Michael, I realized that I didn't feel comfortable with Michael having a spouse. They'll come together (heh) later on, just in a different way. I may eventually go back and rewrite previous chapters for continuity's sake.
> 
> Secondly: well. This chapter gets pretty dirty, y'all. Of course, I highly anybody who's this far into the story really gives a shit about that--I'm sure some of you are even LOOKING FORWARD to it--but I just thought I'd throw a head's up.
> 
> And finally, for all of you that have stuck with me this entire ride: THANK YOU. Thank you thank you thank you, for all of your patience and kind words. I have no words for how grateful I am. It means that world that after all this time, people are still so avid and passionate about this story. You all warm my heart...enjoy!

Around nine, a text from Geoff comes in: _Seven Seas Park at 1100. Heyman needs briefing. Jack will pick you up._

Ray, who smoked two bowls last night and got zero hours and zero minutes of sleep, who has been desperately avoiding his phone, and Ryan’s incessant calling, and his own mental can of worms, replies immediately: _Sound good._

— —

“Aren’t you hot with that damn thing on?”

Ray doesn’t look up, though it’s not like he needs to—after all, no stranger would approach him so crassly about his fucking _hoodie_. “Not particularly.”

Heyman sits beside him as Ray scratches at his neck, attention divided between the sergeant and his DS. Even if the guy decides to pull a 180—not likely, given how he called the heat off of Los Santos’ Most Wanted just to get five minutes with them—Ray’s not bothered. Highly public place, he’s strapped, and Jack and Michael are nearby ready to play bodyguard, sitting off on the benches flanking the playground. 

“Oh Jesus,” Heyman mutters, seeing what’s got Ray occupied. “What are you, twelve? I haven’t seen one of those in forever.”

Ray pauses Pokemon Black and White and snaps the DS shut. “Well I wouldn’t have _had_ to play it to pass the time if your ass hadn’t been late.”

Joel scowls. “Late? It’s 11:06.”

“Yeah,” Ray says, “and in our world, a minute over is late.” A complete lie (he himself, along with Team Nice Dynamite, have been consistently late to _far_ more important affairs on numerous occasions). But Heyman doesn’t need to know that.

“Whatever you say, kid.”

“Oh, so it’s like that? We aren’t even working together yet and already with the insults?”

“You shitting me? How is ‘kid’ an _insult_? I’d _pay_ to be 35 again. Getting old fucking sucks.”

_He’s over 35?_ Ray, frankly, is a little blown away to know that. But the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. He has to be older than Ryan, seeing how he was the one who arrested him way back when, but it’s still a little hard to believe. The man’s movie-star handsome, with not a wrinkle or strand of gray to be seen. Not that Ray says anything about it. Jesus. He admits he has a crush on one older man and suddenly he’s getting all gay and fawning over _all_ of them?

“Odd choice,” the sergeant notes. “To meet.”

“It’s normal,” Ray says. “Inconspicuous.” _And public._

Heyman utters a mild scoff. “Yeah.” His voice is rife with dead, adult lifelessness. “Normal.”

“Not your speed either, huh?”

“Nope.” Heyman yawns. “I can’t even remember the last time I was in a park.”

“I can. After a mission. I got clipped and had to patch up behind a bathroom.” Ray examines the toe of his left shoe. Ah yes, that night. The night he ripped his own cut wide open like he was splitting a seam and the night he began to realize maybe Ryan was More Than a Coworker. Good times. “Again, not exactly normal.”

Heyman doesn’t answer. He’s looking out at the playground, seemingly lost in thought. Unbeknownst to him, Michael is looking right back, halfway reclined on the bench beside a book-reading Jack and watching them blatantly behind his mirrored aviators.

With Heyman’s head turned, Ray slits a hand across his throat. Michael grins and doesn’t look away. Bastard.

“So Ramsey tells me you have a task for me.”

Ray nods, despite having no audience to see it. Joel gets the message regardless.

“What was Haywood’s initiation, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Clean up,” Ray replies, and he could laugh at himself. “He tied up a loose end that was giving us trouble.”

“Trevor Philips, right?” In the responding silence, Heyman finally looks at him again. “You don’t have to answer. We got a call earlier this year about a body that got pulled out of the Land Act reservoir, up in the Tataviam. The minute I saw the guy, I knew it could only be Haywood’s work. It was too fucking brutal to be anybody else’s.”

They found the body? Geoff had neglected to mention that.

“No fingerprints, no DNA evidence...he’d been in the water too long. Thirty-eight stab wounds, though, all deep, and one cut to the throat. And—” Joel flinches. “—he’d been sexually assaulted. Either that or somebody had given him the hardest ass-fucking of his life.” He pauses to let a group of young skateboarders float past, looking a little contrite. “And the last, I should say.”

Ray’s head reels a little. _Ryan had fucked Trevor?_ What _else_ didn’t he know?? Fuck what he said a few days ago, he’s now _very_ in favor of jumping a cop in. The dude’s a treasure trove of new info.

(And well...okay, that one he could have guessed. After all, two grown men don’t blow $300 on a hotel room just to cuddle.)

Clearing his throat, he says, “Did Geoff give you any details on what he’d like you to do?”

“No, sir. He just told me to come here and you’d tell me everything.”

Ray nods, and for the next ten minutes or so, he does just that.

As Ray talks, children run and bike past, joggers and dog walkers and older couples out for a stroll go by, Michael and Jack alternate between acting inconspicuous and watching, and Heyman doesn’t seem to move a single muscle. He doesn’t even ask questions. He just lets Ray talk with a blank, receptive look on his face.

It’s a gorgeous Saturday morning, with the sky overhead a pure, cloudless azure. To anybody walking by, they probably look like friends having an engaging chat.

After he’s done, Joel sits back like a grand weight’s been shoved into his chest, and Ray almost feels bad for the guy. What Geoff wants, thanks to Ryan, is no easy feat, even for a cop supposedly so crooked. He wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing out of Heyman’s mouth is a big, fat, _hell NO_.

But here’s what comes instead:

“Okay.”

Ray blinks. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Evenly, Joel looks him in the eye. He might as well be watching the news. “I’ll do it.”

Ray opens his mouth, right as the sergeant adds, “But—let me ask you one thing.” A bitter trace of humor graces his smile. “Did Haywood think that one up by any chance?”

Not overly keen on talking about right Ryan at the moment, Ray nods once, but Heyman’s smile only deepens knowingly. “Figures. That level of insanity sounded like him.”

“Well it’ll sure as shit prove if you really want this.”

“Oh, I do. I can’t say I’m not still surprised, though. Your crew really doesn’t fuck around. Most of the gangs around here require you kill rival gang members or endure a beating or something.”

Ray fights the urge to wince. God, the guy’s not even _bothered_. The rest of them are wild, yes, but to a point, and it’s clear now that Heyman is very much without limits. The same breed as Ryan. He’ll fit right in. 

“Guess that’s the nice thing about being small.” Ray stretches his arms above his head, DS shifting in his lap. “We don’t have many enemies.”

“Oh,” Heyman says, “you will. Trust me. The talk at the station has been insane lately. Plenty of small time gangbangers and hoodlums are starting to realize worshipping you guys might not be as sexy as stepping up and challenging you. Dethroning Ramsey would get them all the street cred they could ever want.”

Ray snorts. “Well good fucking luck to them. The last outfit that gave us any trouble got their shit blown to Hell.” He coughs. “Off the record, of course.”

“Buddy, I’d say all of this is off the fucking record.” Heyman reaches down to adjust his pant leg, which has cuffed around the ankle. Ray watches out of the corner of his eye, less concerned about Joel pulling a piece and more just observing; in a expensive blue polo and jeans, he looks like just another citizen, and a well-groomed one, at that. If it weren’t for the feral sadism lurking beneath those piercing dark eyes, he’d be just another face in the crowd.

None of the Crew is really _normal_ —they all take up space. They’re loud. They’re messy. Even when they’re not on the clock, they’re noticeable, Geoff with his tattoos and mustache, _Ryan_ and his, well, his _everything_ , Michael with his hysterical laugh and booming voice, and so on. And for someone who doesn’t “do normal” and sure as hell doesn’t act it, either, Heyman’s as close to it as you can get compared to the rest of them. 

“I gotta ask,” Ray hears himself say. 

“Yeah.”

“Why would you want in with us? Couple of lowlife criminals and you’re itching to get in...I don’t get it.” Or maybe he has an idea, at least, after talking to Meg yesterday. But he doesn’t pin Heyman as a _well, because it’ll be fun_ kind of guy. 

Joel looks thoughtful for a moment, then tilts his chin. “What do you think of, when you look at that playground over there?”

Ray side-eyes him, but there’s nothing but curious sincerity on Heyman’s face.

“Why…?”

“It’s important, trust me.”

Ray follows the direction of Heyman’s gaze and tries to ignore both Michael _and_ Jack openly staring now. Dumbasses have been doing this for years and you’d think they were fucking amateurs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think ‘man, I really wish I could still fit into the baby swings.’”

Joel chuckles. “Do you know what I think?”

“It better not be fucking creepy.”

“No. Nothing creepy.” He brushes back his hair—a futile effort, too, judging how it’s standing up in every direction. “I think about how that could have been me, sitting on one of those benches over there. Watching my kids play on the monkey bars, or going down the slide. Talking to another parent about what my son did or how my daughter’s doing in school, or texting my wife and telling her how cute they look on the jungle gym. Something fucking _stupid_ and _everyday_ that parents do and never think twice about.”

Ray glances at him again. No wrinkles, sure, but instead there’s a definitive shadow over his face that only comes in over time. Ray’s seen it before, in Geoff’s face, after the divorce. Any time Gavin or Jack or Michael or any of them get shot and he has to be strong. It’s something like being faced with the bleak reality of the world and only being able to look back at it, grim and knowing. 

“But that’ll never be me,” Heyman continues. “Ever. It’ll probably never be any of you, either, no matter how many times you tell yourself you’ll settle down one day or find a wife—and even if you do.” He shrugs. “That whole domestic dream just isn’t for people like us, and that’s exactly why I want to join.”

“Because that’s our life.”

“Because I’m a _deadbeat_ ,” Heyman corrects, with stunning bitterness. “I’m a cop who hates his job, hates his fucking coworkers, practically hates his _life_. So fuck it. Why should I stick with being good, when being bad has so many opportunities? So much more possibility than being some dead-end sergeant? I never wanted to be a cop, anyways, but I barely passed high school and it was better than enlisting. And if I die, it’s not like I have a wife or kids to worry about. Y’know?” 

“Makes sense.” Maybe not so normal after all, Ray decides. He’s also thinking about Meg, who’s surely younger than Joel and how, surprise surprise, she more or less had the same reasons as him after all, just without the rancor. Ray’s never been a bachelor degree, 9-5 job kind of person (and Heyman’s right, he never will be, either), so all of this is new to him. This attitude. This _I’ve got nothing left to lose, so fuck it_ attitude, earned after months of suburban monotony. 

It makes him wonder, looking out at the playground again, just how many of the adults there feel the same way. 

Michael raises his arms in a _so...?_ sort of gesture. Ray holds up a finger and turns back to Heyman.

“You got any questions?”

Joel shakes his head. “Nah.” His petulance now over, he’s got his arms folded and is watching an indeterminate point on the grass. “I think I got it.”

“Y’know, you got a lot of balls sitting next to me in broad daylight. Like, what if one of your buddies sees?”

The corner of the sergeant’s mouth curls, ever so slightly. “I have a cover story if they do.”

“Oh boy,” Ray says. “You better not be like, ‘ _no_ , guys, you got it all wrong, I was merely asking the young man if he would like to engage in a rousing bit of hide the salam, not any sort of _criminal_ activity.’”

At that, Joel lets out the first _real_ laugh Ray’s heard from him, but it’s washed out by the way his head spins; whatever it is that’s making him realize how attractive this guy is or is now having him blurt out crazy bullshit like that...yeah, he needs to calm it the _fuck_ down. Because if it’s like this _now_ and he and Ryan aren’t even technically an _item_ yet, then, well…

Fuck.

Just thinking about Ryan rips the wound raw all over again.

Not that he even gave it a chance to heal. All night last night, Ray had laid awake alternating between staring at his ceiling and the far wall of his bedroom, restlessly turning over the idea in his mind: if there could be a them, an _us_ , or at the very least something _solid_ to the two of them instead of another minute of him and Ryan averting their eyes and hopelessly twirling around a point they could never touch. And the longer he’d lain there—which had gone from the one hour he promised himself to an additional _nine of them_ —the angrier he’d gotten at himself. Like...so what Ryan was another man? And nearly eight years older? So what? _SO WHAT?_ Ray liked him. A _lot_. And according to every romance novel Ray could think of, _that conquered all_ or some shit. 

Right. 

That little pipe dream was all well and good until it occurred to Ray moments later: in _The Notebook_ , was Noah a cold-blooded killer who dropped cops and criminals like flies? Was Allie some fucked-up orphan who fantasized about Noah cutting her open with a kitchen knife? _No._ And that’s more or less what had kept him up until six in the morning. That, and remembering Ryan’s lips on his, and fighting the urge to dig his phone out of his kitchen drawer and do something incredibly stupid. 

He hadn’t been planning on it, but the more Ray watches Heyman now, tilting his head back to bask in the midday sun, the more he realizes just how rich of a chance could be lying right next to him. 

Because while he may have read Ryan’s files, at length and in detail, he doesn’t really _know_ Ryan. Not completely, anyways. Not in the way that he’s been _dying_ to know since the beginning, in the way that turns Ryan into a door slammed shut any time the question of it is even brought up. Really, Ray—or any of them—only knows about as much as Ryan wants him to know: he knows that Ryan’s calculated, observant, deliberate, whip smart, ruthless, and very, very patient. He knows that Ryan had a monstrous father and a terrible wife and his rap sheet is a colorful, blood-splattered mess—and now, thanks to Lindsay, he knows that Ryan got his seemingly endless repertoire of musical theatre knowledge from doing drama work in high school. But it’s not _enough_. It’s so open-ended and scattered and _vague_ that Ray has only been left feeling hungry. And sure, okay, sometimes little peeks of Ryan’s true self will show, like how he always carries a pack of Hot Tamales on him like a pocket Bible, or sings when he’s killing people, or carries cigarettes to make friends, and has this unique, dramatic flair that turns the blood-soaked streets of Los Santos into a stage from Hell. But that’s all Ray ever gets of of the _true_ , uncensored Ryan, before cold, robotic Ryan steps back in to take his place. No amount of holing up in his apartment and reading Ryan’s files is ever going to change what Ray knows. 

But Joel. Oh—

Joel _knows_.

He knows the Ryan Haywood who ran over his neighbor’s cat with a lawn mower, the Ryan Haywood who showed up on Lindsay’s doorstep asking her to run away with him, the Ryan Haywood who went to school with bruises before he dropped out and lost his virginity to a hooker while he had his hands clamped around her neck. Joel knows, to some extent—or at least as close as Ray’s gonna get at this point—what made Ryan into _Ryan_. Maybe he can’t tell Ray everything. Hell, maybe he only ever saw Ryan on the night he arrested him, and his knowledge of him ends at fifteen year old Ryan confessing while cuffed to a table. But does Ray give a damn at this point? After he spent all night thrashing around on his 1800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets wondering how the hell he could date somebody _he hardly even knows_? Fuck no.

Before he can pussy out, Ray bursts: “I need to ask you something.”

Joel cracks his knuckles. “Go for it.”

“It’s about Ryan.”

“Who?”

Ray pauses, staring at him. Heyman stares back with uninhibited confusion.

“...Ryan _Haywood_?”

“ _OH_ ,” Joel exclaims loudly. A woman walking her dog nearby jumps. “Sorry. I’m just not used to him being called that.”

Ray rolls his eyes. “Right.”

“What do you wanna know?”

“Not sure, exactly.” A lie. Ray knows. He knows exactly what he wants to know. “What was he like, back then?”

“Crazy,” Heyman answers automatically. “I knew Haywood when he was a kid, but when we booked him, he was a teenager. Craziest motherfucker I’d ever laid eyes on, and he was only fifteen. Gave everyone in the station chills.”

Ray frowns. “How’d you even arrest him?” Not that he doesn’t already know. But, hey, maybe it doesn’t hurt to ask. 

“Oh, easily,” Heyman says. “He didn’t even care about getting caught. When we picked him up, he was walking on the side of I-4 smoking a Turkish Royal. He didn’t try to run or anything; he just stopped and waited for us, his jacket covered in blood. And later that night, he fucking confessed to everything without pause.” He smirks. “I’ll be honest, I was a little annoyed. My partner’s kid had lost a few dogs thanks to Haywood, so we’d been gunning to arrest him for years. Had shit planted and everything. A part of me thinks he confessed just to piss us all off.”

Ray nods, a little disturbed by Heyman’s forthcomingness and lack of shame. But regardless, the nod is mostly for show—he’s not gonna make the same mistake he did with Lindsay, where he makes it obvious this is old news—and starts steering them to where he really wants to go: “He hated his dad, right?”

“Yup, as he fucking should have. His old man was an even bigger sicko than Haywood is now.”

Doubtful. But Ray doesn’t reply.

“Everyone called me a hero when I put him in jail.” Heyman shrugs. “I hated Jimmy—Ryan, sorry—with a passion, but between you and me, I’d rather have taken in his dad _once_ and never have caught Haywood than the other way around. But it all worked out in the end, I guess. His old man was dead, Haywood was behind bars, and the the arrest got me promoted and eventually moved down here.”

There’s a beat, where Heyman’s a simmering pillar of hostility and Ray’s silent, digesting it all.

Then: “Not that it really got me anywhere, in the end.”

“Joel,” Ray says. 

“Yes?”

“What,” Ray begins, dreading the answer, “did Ryan’s dad do to him exactly?” And just like that, it’s quiet. 

Heyman looks at him for a long time. To Michael and Jack, this would look like about the time that Joel would unholster a gun, or snap and attack Ray, that’s how eerily still he’s gone. It doesn’t seem to be out of horror, either. It looks like it’s actually out of courtesy for Ray. As if he’s giving him a moment to reconsider.

Ray just looks into Heyman’s dark eyes until, finally, the older man sighs.

“Well.”

— —

After Joel leaves, Ray’s on his way back to Michael and Jack—trembling a little, but he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it—when he plows into a dude who steps right into his path.

“Oh, shit,” Ray says, catching himself before he falls. The other guy’s fine, either some kind of acrobat or an immovable object based on how well he’s anchored to the ground. Ray still finds himself needing to add: “Sorry about that.”

“It’s all good, man,” the dude says, but he’s looking Ray top to bottom like he either wants to fight him, kiss him, or some weird combination of the two. It immediately puts Ray on-edge, and annoys the shit out of him, all in one breath. Like, seriously, can he go _one fucking day_ without getting recognized??

When the guy’s unabashed stare doesn’t diminish, Ray clears his throat. “You sure?”

“Where do I know you from?”

“I don’t know, my guy,” Ray says, looking up. Michael and Jack have stood, and at a rather rapid pace it seems, given the way Jack’s hardback is still in his hand, hanging open like a door. “Where _do_ you know me from?”

The man half-turns, likely following Ray’s gaze—good; that was the intention—but frustratingly, the sight of Michael and Jack death-glaring at him doesn’t discourage him in the slightest. Weirdly enough, they only seem to energize him.

“No fucking way.”

“ _Yes?_ ” Ray clips.

“Dude,” the guy says, eyes wide. “You’re the fucking _Fake AH Crew_.”

(God fucking damnit God _fucking_ damnit.) “Half of it, yes.” As annoyed as he is, Ray’s halfway tempted to wave Michael and Jack away. This guy’s a fan, not a threat.

“ _Fuuuuck_ , that’s rad. I’ve seen you guys all over Instagram and Twitter but never in person.” He’s smiling ear-to-ear, like his entire year’s been made. “You’re Ray, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Sweet,” he rhapsodizes, in total contrast to Ray’s dry deadpan. “My name’s Jeremy.”

He’s stuck his hand out, which Ray takes not only to be polite but to let Michael and Jack know that _everything’s cool_ , but in the back of his mind he’s cursing TND to Hell and back. If it wasn’t for their ridiculous affinity for all things social media, the rest of the Crew wouldn’t be treated like goddamn celebrities all the time. Maybe _that’s_ why they don’t have as many enemies as they should: _none of the other outfits in the city take them seriously._

“Dude,” Jeremy continues, “if you guys are ever looking for personal muscle or somebody who’s good with computers, I’m your fucking guy.”

Is he serious? “I’ll put in a word with Geoff.”

Jeremy beams, missing the sarcasm by a _fucking mile_ , and Ray kind of wants to gouge his eyes own out. But more than anything, he wants to get the fuck out of here ASAP (and no it’s _totally_ not to go talk to Ryan or anything _jeez_ ), so he looks to his rides with the best pleading expression he can muster.

They must get the point, because here they come, speed-walking past the moms and dads and their fussing babies. His cavalry in plainclothes arriveth. 

“Anyways, dude—hey, do you want my card? I have a YouTube account, so I kinda like, got my own cards made and everything…”

“Really?” Ray says.

“Yeah.” Jeremy looks embarrassed, hands all stuffed in his pocket. “Total tool move, I know, but my buddy Matt, well, like, this guy’s a _genius_ , y’know, he’s so good with hacking that he makes me look like a five year old with a keyboard. And yeah, he said it would be—”

“We good here?” Michael booms behind them, making both of them—yes, even Ray—jump. Ray rolls his eyes while Jeremy stares, almost transfixed.

Then, in a warbling, excited voice: “ _You’re—_ ”

“Michael Jones.” At least he’s not yelling this time. He and Jack do not try to hide the fact that they’re checking Jeremy out, from the top of his brown-haired head down to the tips of his red Chuck Taylors. Finally, Michael says, “How ya doing?”

“Great,” Jeremy says. “ _Amazing_ now, anyways.” He shakes Michael’s hands with as much vigor as he did Ray’s, then turns to Jack. “And you must be Jack.”

“That I am.” Jack, far less extroverted than Michael but nonetheless polite, returns the handshake offered to him. “Nice to meet you…”

“Jeremy. Jeremy Dooley.”

“Jeremy.” Jack’s smiling, but still he shoots Ray a sidelong look when he can: _who is this guy?_

“Well,” Jeremy continues, “hey, I just remembered that you guys are probably busy so I won’t keep you. It was super cool to meet you all, though.”

“Fuck yeah.” Now Michael smiles, public image instincts taking over. “You want an autograph or anything, bud?”

Jeremy waves him off. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though, man, you and Gavin are definitely my favorites. Your Twitter is easily the funniest shit I read on any given week.”

Temporary suspicion forgotten, Michael’s glowing in the praise. Jack and Ray swap an exasperated look.

“Anyways, I’ll let you all go. Thanks again, for giving me the time of day.”

Michael nods. “Any time, man.” 

They turn and head down the paved path to the sidewalk, but they only make it as far as the bathroom before Jeremy is shouting behind them: “Ray!”

Ray looks over his shoulder. 

Jeremy’s jogging—yes, _jogging_ —toward him, and definitely turning heads. Michael’s annoyance has returned while Jack just looks away, as if he can pretend there aren’t a dozen people staring if he just _doesn’t look_.

A little winded, Jeremy stops in front of Ray with a small white card between his fingers.

Oh. That.

“Forgot to give this to you,” he says, grinning breathlessly. Ray forces a smile and plucks it free.

“Thanks.”

As they start to walk away again, Jeremy says, “My number and Twitter handle are on that.” He has a hand extended in a goodbye wave. “Hit me up sometime, seriously!”

“For sure, man,” Ray calls back, not even half meaning it.

— —

“Okay,” Michael says, once they’re out of earshot. “Nice guy and everything, but who the fuck was _that_?”

Ray shrugs; in spite of his desire to never read it further, the card is nonetheless sitting dutifully in his back pocket, because come on, he would feel just a _little_ bad if he just _threw_ it out. “No fucking clue.”

“Was he looking to join or something?” Jack has an indignant look on his face. “You’d think if he was such a fan he’d know that we’re _never_ hiring.”

“I dunno, dude, we _did_ hire Ryan,” Michael retorts. “And, if everything goes smoothly on Friday, Heyman, too.”

“That’s different. One’s all the personal protection Geoff could ever want and the other’s a cop. What could _that_ guy possibly have to offer us?”

“Well,” Ray says in a lisping voice, “apparently he has a friend who’s a _hacker_.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Right.”

“Whatever.” Fishing his fob out of his pocket, Jack unlocks the Town Car, which is sparkling in the midday sun at the curb. “We’ll never see him again, anyways.”

— —

The meeting took roughly thirty-five minutes. This is what’s waiting for him, breathless and impatient, when he finally unlocks his phone:

 **Ryan** : After I showed up to your empty apartment this morning, Geoff informed me you would be briefing Heyman at a park somewhere...he wouldn’t tell me where, so I’m guessing he’s finally catching on. Anyways I’m assuming that’s the reason you’re not returning my calls?

And then, ten minutes later:

**Ryan** : Sorry. Not trying to be aggressive but I very desperately need to see you and I’m really not sure how I can make that point clearer. Are you finished now?

Ray clenches his phone until his knuckles white out.

As Michael and Jack hang up the call with Burnie and dial Geoff up front, Ray sinks low in his seat and texts back. 

**Ray** : It ran a little over, but yeah we’re done  
Ray: And don’t worry, I very desperately need to see you too. Just didn’t wanna call you back and decide to ditch at the last second

Immediately:

**Ryan** : Good. To all of it  
**Ryan** : I’ll see you soon.

That period carries a finality to it that makes Ray shiver a little. It’s mid-spring, and fast approaching on summer, so the AC is blasting through vents on the back of the center console; he closes them halfway in a futile attempt to reduce the goosebumps that have suddenly broken out on his skin. 

God, what is he, a fucking teenage girl? Here he is reading into Ryan’s _punctuation_ and getting the shivers from a fucking _text_. Next thing he knows he’s gonna be scribbling Ryan’s name on random pieces of paper and writing “Mr. Ray Haywood” over and over in a notebook while Geoff tries to deploy him. Ludicrous.

Keeping it as non-eager as possible (aka the exact opposite of how he’s feeling), he replies:

**Ray** : ‘I’ll see you soon’? What dude, are you like LIVING at my apartment now?

It takes Ryan a minute to reply. 

**Ryan** : They’re taking you back to your apartment? Fuck. 

Ray narrows his eyes at that. But before he can fire off something confused yet witty—maybe something like _Ryan you’re a smart guy but I swear you’re dumb sometimes, where ELSE would they take me?_ —Michael sticks his head in the space between the two front seats.

“Well Geoff, something about what he’s wearing tells me that, _yet again_ , he forgot it was today.”

Ray pinches his brows together. Michael’s grinning at him.

“ _Oh_ yeah,” Jack says, grim gaze locked on the rear view. “He definitely forgot.”

“ _Goddamnit_ ,” Geoff says over the Bluetooth. “If that boy didn’t have eyes like a fucking hawk, he might actually start trying my patience.”

“Did I miss mine and Geoff’s anniversary or something?” Ray asks, then raises his voice to ensure he’s heard. “’Cause shit, baby, you know I love you so fucking much, my mind’s just been so scattered lately—”

“Fuck off,” Geoff says mildly. A pause, during which the Jester in front of them attempts a disastrous lane change and earns itself several outrage horns of protest. Then: “My annual spring barbecue is today. Seeing as you obviously didn’t mark your calendar.”

“Oh shit,” Ray mutters, just as his phone vibrates again. (It’s Ryan: _Brb bout to go fist fight with Geoff to escape this stupid party thing, wish me luck._ ) “I totally—”

“What, worgot?” Geoff finishes shrilly. “Yes, Raymond, I figured as much.”

“ _Oooooh_ ,” Michael says under his breath. Half-hearted, Ray swats Michael’s arm, and gets a swat back. And here he was thinking Michael and Jack got all dolled up—if flip flops and tank tops constitute as “dolled up”—just to keep watch over his ass. Silly him. 

“ _Anyways_ ,” Geoff says, “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Jack’s got you hostage until you reach my place, so I kind of win either way.”

— —

**Ray** : No fighting. Apparently they ARE taking me to Geoff’s after all  
 **Ryan** : Jesus, give me a fucking heart attack why don’t you? I was getting ready to punch our boss in the face for you  
 **Ray** : Aww Ryan aren’t you excited to see me tho?  
 **Ryan** : Excited to see you, absolutely. Excited to see you in a house full of people, with few places to hide? Not at all.  
 **Ray** : Kinky

— —

Geoff’s estate, nestled on a hilltop not far from Jack’s, is about as garish and opulent as one would expect a crime lord’s to be. Six-car garage, massive circular driveway with a marble fountain, Grecco pillars, transparent glass balcony, patio with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, two Jacuzzis, and an underwater bar, and so on. The driveway that leads up to it, unfurling beyond the max-security iron gates out front, is maybe two miles long, shaded by an opaque canopy, loaded with hidden security cameras, and so winding and steep that it always blows Ray’s mind anybody can get up it going under 35. Due to the large target on his head, Geoff rarely has them come here for anything, but he can’t resist showing off his pride and joy, acquired after nearly fifteen years of working for it, at least once a year. Not that Ray, or any of them, mind.

Well. Except today. Today he’s a ball of frayed nerves as they walk into the foyer, but that’s not exactly the house’s fault.

Geoff’s there waiting to escort them to one of the family rooms, in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts to match Jack. Only difference is while Jack’s in a $200 pair of prescription glasses, Geoff has a pair of Dolce sunglasses costing nearly ten times as much affixed to his face, even indoors; walking in the rear, Michael and Ray are safe to share an amused look at that. They all have expensive tastes, but their boss is the _king_ : both of wearing them and showing them off.

According to Geoff, the “rest of the family”, including Lindsay and Burnie, are in the ground level family room, and there goes Ray’s stomach all over again, knotting like a rope. On the way up the criminally long driveway, Ryan had fired off another text— _Are you oyw?_ —in the most unlike-him fashion. Meaning he’s eager, and impatient, which also means Ray won’t be getting off easy today. 

And he doesn’t. The minute he walks into the room, he sees Ryan on one of the couches, and their eyes lock and hold. No breathing room allowed. 

With his costly eyewear pushed to the crown of his head, Geoff starts talking about Heyman, which Ray feels safe to tune out given that he _just_ saw the guy—and fuck, even if he didn’t, how could he listen with Ryan sitting right there, looking at Ray like he could eat him with a spoon? Ray doubts Ryan slept anymore than he did, but he cleans up amazingly, as usual: his hair’s freshly cut, his dark blue eyes looking refreshed and bright, and he looks casual and comfy in a clean polo, olive Bermuda shorts, and leather loafers. Meanwhile Ray didn’t even shave this morning and is sporting a sweaty hoodie that’s been in need of a wash for weeks. And as much as he wants to feel insecure about that, if Ryan notices any of it, it doesn’t dissuade the hunger in his eyes any. 

Casually while Geoff talks, Ryan takes his eyes away from Ray for the first and only time and types something out on his phone. And Ray, he keeps his fist clenched around his own phone in the pocket of his hoodie, because yup, there it goes, those two buzzes signifying he just got the text Ryan sent him. When Ryan’s finished, his eyes are back on Ray’s and he’s grinning. Fucker.

Ray can only survive about thirty seconds of suspense before he slides it out just enough to read: _Stay behind when everyone leaves._

He doesn’t reply, but it’s not like he needs to. Not like it was meant to be an actual command, instead of a _taunt_. Because when the room clears out, he knows that, if Geoff allows it, he’s not going anywhere, as much the mere idea is inflating his anxiety like an overstretched balloon at the moment. 

And eventually, the moment comes. So much faster than it ought to.

After Gavin accidentally reveals he’s ticklish and endures a squealing chase from Michael around the room, they all start to mellow out and head to the deck for drinks. They also don’t seem keen on having everyone come, meaning Ryan’s going to get his wish, and Ray’s flushed cold yet again. This flip-flopping attitude is really starting to piss him off. Like, can he make up his _mind_ already? Ryan must have the patience of an ox to put up with this for so goddamn long. 

He almost, _almost_ loses when Michael says, “Coming, Ray?” And under normal circumstances, there’d be a point to his words, but he’s distracted, staring after Gavin with something like a cross between desire and sorrow. Now that’s a look that’s familiar to Ray: _longing_.

“In a bit,” he says, half-hearted because Michael’s not even fully there to begin with. It suffices, too; Michael’s gone after an absent-minded nod. Leaving them alone. 

The air is thick enough to touch.

“Hi,” Ray whispers.

“Hi,” Ryan says softly. He has his head cocked, looking Ray over. “I missed you.”

Ray snorts, which makes Ryan raise an amused brow. “Sorry. It’s just that it’s kinda been less than twenty-four hours since I last saw you.”

“Has it?” Ryan purrs. “Weird. It’s felt like _so_ much longer.”

Despite it all, Ray smiles to himself. “You should sit,” Ryan says. “I’d feel rude if it was just you standing by yourself.”

“Oh you would, huh?” Ray asks, catty, but nevertheless. He crosses the room and obediently sits, because he’d be lying if he convinced himself he hadn’t wanted to. Even if he sits a good foot away, hands knotted together in his lap. 

There’s a silence, in which it feels like the two of them are just soaking each other in. Being this close to Ryan makes Ray feel engulfed. Embraced. His skin is on fire and simultaneously flushed cold. 

Without thinking, he blurts, “You smell good.”

Ryan laughs, and he actually sounds _shocked_ in addition to pleased, leaving Ray to frantically backpedal: “ _Fuck_ , sorry, I don’t know what my fucking deal is to—”

“Ray. It’s fine. You just surprised me, is all.”

“Well shit, dude, it’s true.” Ray clears his throat, ignoring the heat in his face. “You always have.”

Ryan doesn’t reply, just gives him a look that’s so plainly affectionate it makes Ray’s heart drum dramatically in his chest. He’s beginning to find that Ryan is not only beautiful, but so goddamn _painfully_ beautiful sometimes that looking directly at him is like looking at the sun.

God. He’s so fucked.

“So,” Ray chokes out, in a futile effort to distract his mouth from how much he wants to put it onto Ryan’s right about now, “I ran into some guy at the park today who asked if we could hire him and his friend.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And—fucking get this.” Ray lifts his hips to get the card, aware of just how _bad_ of an idea that is—Ryan doesn’t exactly try to hide how his eyes trace the arc of Ray’s back—and shakingly retrieves the card from his back pocket. “He has a _business_ card. That he like, gave to me.”

That makes him wants to slap himself. “That he like, gave to me”? _Noooo, that I found on the ground and just decided to pick up._ Why is he so damn nervous? He hasn’t been this fidgety or jumpy around a person since fucking high school. 

When he finally musters up the gall to meet Ryan’s gaze again, he sure as fuck isn’t looking at the card.

“Interesting.”

“Ryan,” Ray scolds mildly, “you’re not even _looking_.”

“Well, Ray, normally I would, but there’s something far more interesting in the room at the moment, and a man has his limits.”

“You sure, Mr. Will of Iron?” Ray mutters, earning himself, at the very least, another one of Ryan’s delightful, musical laugh.

“So that’s how you see me.”

“As a stubborn fuck and persistent bastard? Why yes, Ryan, I do.”

“Can’t argue there.” Ryan rolls his neck, eyes closed. Ray fists his hands in his lap. The man really is too pretty for his own damn good. “So. What’d Heyman have to say about our proposal?”

“He’s in.”

Ryan opens his eyes. “Really.”

“Yeah.” Since they’re alone, Ray kicks his feet up on the glass and mahogany coffee table. Geoff would amputate on the spot if he saw it. “He didn’t even put up a fight. Burnie said he’ll keep us updated Monday, but I think this crazy motherfucker’s really gonna do it.”

“Wow,” Ryan says in a low voice. He sounds impressed—so unusual for him, but then again, he’s been speaking quieter than usual this entire time. (If Ray had to guess, it’s for more or less the same reason for his own nervousness: a fruitless attempt to hold himself back.) “He’s gotten even more crooked with age.”

Ray shrugs. “Hey, if that doesn’t prove loyalty, then I don’t know what will.”

They stare at each other for a long moment after that before, finally, Ray blushingly breaks the hold. Ryan has his arm casually slung across the couch’s cushions, behind Ray’s head, and as much as Ray _really fucking wants_ to lean into it, he’s afraid that any kind of physical contact will break down what little barrier they have completely. 

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Ryan,” Ray says.

Ryan shifts closer, face serene. Fucker. He knows exactly what he’s doing. “You should tell me, you know. Even if you think I don’t wanna hear it.”

“You really don’t.”

“Ray.” Ryan drags the _a_ out, chiding. “You know damn well I wanna hear _everything_ you have to say.”

“Everything? Even my horribly off-key singing? Because, dude, I can’t even get _Michael_ to listen to that shit, and that man is the _king_ of singing like a dying bear.”

There’s no reply to that, but when Ray turns his head, Ryan’s studying him. That damned little smirk is back on his face.

Softly, he says, “You are too damn cute.”

Ray clears his throat, pretending he’s not warm all over. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Ryan makes sure Ray sees his eyes, locked on Ray’s lips. “And, as you know, I’m _very_ creative when I wanna be. So if I _really_ wanted to get it out of you, well...”

“Verifiably insane, is more like it.”

Now Ryan looks up, into Ray’s eyes. “Yeah, but you like it.”

“I do,” Ray whispers, not even strong enough to deny it. “A lot.”

“So.” 

“So.” Ryan just perks an eyebrow, so Ray goes for it (he knows Ryan’s not gonna stop until he hears _something_ , so why not the truth): “I asked Joel about you.”

Something like surprise, before it’s gone. “Just in general?”

“No.” Ryan nods, as if he’s known this from the beginning—fucker probably did. “About you and...your dad.”

It was a risk to say, and it gets results: all at once, a storm gathers, then completely disappears, on Ryan’s face, leaving it taut and expressionless. And it’s the look, _that_ look, that Ray really fucking hates. He’d rather have the storm, have the clouds and Ryan gritting his jaw and being _human_ for once. Fuck that control shit. They were never about it to begin with.

“About what he did to you,” Ray clarifies. Not that he needs to, but still.

Ryan’s voice has the gentle, eerie calm quality of a lake at night. “And what did Joel have to say?”

“He told me about the beatings.” Ray watches Ryan’s face for change and, finding none, continues. “How they started as soon as you could walk. How the neighbors would call the police nearly every month until you were maybe ten or eleven, to the point that your dad could figure out how much time he had before they showed up to hide what he’d done. And how they eventually just stopped coming at all.”

“They knew better,” Ryan says quietly, almost dreamy. But his gaze tells otherwise; it’s horribly cloudy, unattached and lot less romantic, as if stuck in another time.

“At school,” Ray goes on, feeling the same pit of dread open up inside of him as it did back in the park when he first learned this, “sometimes teachers would see the bruises, but could never find a way to prove it.”

“No.” Here, Ryan’s snapped back and interrupts him with a cold look. “It wasn’t that they couldn’t prove it. They just didn’t care.”

Oh.

He continues: “Almost every night, my father would bring home women—prostitutes, usually, but sometimes it was women he’d met at a bar somewhere—and he didn’t care where I was in the house when he fucked them. Sometimes he was so drunk he just left the bedroom door wide open. Like he _wanted_ me to see.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s why I confessed when they arrested me,” Ryan says, and for the first time, Ray can hear mist in his voice. He realizes then that his fists have been wound as tight as springs in his lap this whole time. “I wanted everyone in town to remember me as the boy who’d finally put an end to the human filth that was James Haywood, Sr. When they asked me if I did it, I said, ‘Of course I did. I think I deserved to, don’t you?’”

Ray tries to picture Ryan as a kid, in that blood-soaked jacket Joel told him about. Tries to picture those blue eyes before the light in them snapped out forever. Maybe it was already gone by then—it had to have been. But the more he tries to see it, he can’t.

All he sees is himself.

Eighteen with his grandfather’s knife, except the only blood on his shirt is his own, shaking and alone on the grimy tiles of his motel room bathroom. And he pushes the image away so quickly he can hear it crashing against the walls of his brain. That comparison isn’t fair to either of them, and he damn well knows it; they might have eventually wound up in the same place, but that’s as far as the similarities go. People can be broken and still be nothing alike, can still have sprouted from different seeds. Fifteen year old Ryan would’ve eaten eighteen year old Ray _alive_. 

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Ryan whispers. 

Ray shrugs, fully aware that won’t work for an answer. “I’m just remembering.”

Ryan’s chuckle is low. “That’s dangerous.”

“I know. It keeps me in check sometimes, though.”

“Really? For me, it does the opposite. Just throws me off balance.” At Ray’s inquisitive glance, Ryan adds, “What’s done is done. Leave it where it lies. Right?”

“Sometimes it’s good to remember where you’ve come from, though.”

Ryan doesn’t answer right away, just looks over Ray’s face. Without thinking, Ray says, “I’ve always liked it best when you were like this.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. When you’re all quiet like this. Your edges get softer.” Ray clears his throat self-consciously, but Ryan’s smiling, and it makes Ray’s already abused heart spin helplessly all over again.

“I like it, too.”

Ray tries to laugh, but he fucked up. He pushed them there, _here_ , and it’s getting harder and harder to dance around the elephant in the room that’s been there since the beginning. Ryan’s got his eyes all hooded like he’s about to cut the music, too.

“Can I tell you something else?”

Ray’s suddenly very aware of his pounding heart. “What, like a secret?”

Small, devious smile. “A secret you already know, I’m sure.”

“Shoot.”

And, just as Ray suspected, Ryan leans in until his mouth is grazing the shell of Ray’s ear and not kissing him goes from really damn hard to almost fucking impossible.

In a voice that’s sure to haunt him: “ _If the rest of the Crew wasn’t in the other room, you’d be screaming my name right about now._ ”

Ray shivers, positive something inside of him—the very something he’s been holding back for _months_ —is about to burst. “Wow,” he rasps, “not even gonna wine and dine me first?”

“Oh, I think I’ve wined and dined you enough, Ray.” At the edge, Ryan’s breaks a little as he slips a hand just below Ray’s shirt, across his stomach. Not that Ray would’ve minded if Ryan had headed elsewhere, but _oh_ , this is far more intimate than that, given Ray’s history and _their_ history and things only Ryan knows. It has Ray digging his heels into the carpet just to keep from getting into Ryan’s lap. “But seven months of foreplay can get kind of tiring, don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” Ray’s brain, rendered all but useless by the fingers caressing his skin, can’t conjure more than a word at a time. For the first time, the scars don’t burn.

“Mmm.” Ryan eyes skim down the side of Ray’s face to his lap. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of tease, y’know?”

“Ryan,” Ray says thickly, “the _last_ thing I think you are is _any_ kind of tease. Believe me.”

“Good.” Ray turns his head then, and the hot, animalistic burn inside them both brings their lips together like gravity. Like they’re naturally falling into orbit.

It’s only their second time touching like this, coming together like this, kissing with their mouths eager and their hands sloppy—a _lot_ sloppier than the first time, grabbing and pulling and blindly just _feeling_ for another—and their bodies hot and writhing together, but already it feels second nature. It feels like something they’ve done a thousand times, a million times, just a matter of muscle memory and getting the pieces all lined up. It feels a way that could only be described as completely and utterly _right_. 

This time isn’t as graceful as the first—it’s at an awkward angle, albeit one that neither of them really notice, and there are no solid walls to catch Ray when Ryan inevitably _pins_ him, pins him right down to the cushions and kisses and licks and bites until Ray can’t breathe and isn’t sure he ever wants to again if it means Ryan isn’t kissing the hell out of him. He tries to get his arms around Ryan’s shoulders, just to have _something_ to hold onto, and Ryan pulls him back up so Ray’s in his lap, straddling him, without ever breaking their stride. Which, in turn, oh _fuck_ , yep, that gives Ray an extremely prominent erection to deal with, pressing up against his thigh and making everything rational he’s ever felt seem like a distant memory. 

Good to know he’s not the only one.

Ryan’s not gentle this time, either. The first time seemed to be an introduction to what was coming, a softer, more courteous intro before Ryan _tore him apart_. He’s a biter, for starters—something Ray didn’t know yesterday but is _oh so glad_ to learn—and his hands are blatantly impolite, feeling and pressing and scratching and leaving marks that Ray wishes would never go away. Before he knows it, he’s canting his hips and Ryan’s matching him in a heartbeat, gripping Ray and holding him steady as he dry humps him from below. It gets the fire that’s already burning to roar into a towering inferno.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Ray whispers, right as Ryan groans and buries his face in Ray’s shoulder. They’re synchronized even in their pleasure. Ray just might bust hands free if they keep this up.

“Ryan,” he gasps, “we should stop.”

Ryan decidedly ignores him, sliding down Ray’s neck with a series of hot, feathery kisses that send a hissed breath from between Ray’s clenched teeth.

He tries again: “The Crew could—”

Ground out near his collarbone: “ _I don’t give a shit._ ”

“Yes you— _do_.” Ray breaks free just as Ryan’s in the middle of giving him a hickey. Right on the side of his neck, below his jaw. His flushed face somehow grows even hotter. The Crew would have to be blind to not notice that wasn’t there before they left the room. 

Separated, Ray presses his back into the cushions in a vain attempt to catch his breath. Ryan lays his head back; he looks a little aggravated to be left hanging, but above all else he looks painfully and utterly _aroused_ , with his face flushed and his hair messy and his eyes dark and his mouth stained pink from their frantic kissing. Fucking _God_. There’s a bruise flowering on his lower lip from where Ray bit him—an experiment, which had earned Ray a shudder and strong hands gripping him helplessly—and Ray has to actually physically _turn_ away from Ryan to keep from attacking him again. Damn him. Damn Ryan Haywood and his frustratingly enticing ways. 

In a ragged voice, Ryan says, “Come here.”

“No,” Ray croaks.

“For fuck’s sake—”

“—you think I don’t want to, Ryan, the Crew is right next door, you said so your _fucking self_ —”

“—then we’ll find a room goddamnit Ray, I _need you_ , I need _this_ —”

“— _okay_ , we can find a room, just let—”

“Oh.”

They wrench apart, like pads of butter sliding to opposite sides of a hot pan, at the sound of a third voice. It probably looked bad—hell, it probably looked _horrible_ —being all disheveled and arguing like that, but whatever. The Crew’s gonna find out sooner or later. 

But across the room, there’s a body in the doorway, and it’s far too small to be any of the Crew’s. Both of them blink in surprise. 

At the same time: “ _Meg?_ ”

“Hi,” she says with her usual girly brightness. She’s dressed for summer—a floaty white halter top, frayed cutoffs, feet bare and pomegranate colored hair piled on top of her head—so she’s definitely not lost or anything. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no.” Ryan’s standing, the escalation to near-fucking with Ray seemingly forgotten. He beams that usual charming, sugar-sweet smile of his, and she visibly relaxes. “Everything’s fine.”

“Okay, cool.” She waves a tiny, manicured hand as if just now noticing. “Hi, Ray.”

“Hey, Meg.” He’s actually glad to see her—a few more seconds and she would’ve walked in on them with Ryan’s hand down Ray’s pants. That would’ve been interesting.

Ryan crosses the room and hugs her, which throws up all sorts of warning flags for Ray (such as _dude what if she feels your boner wtf are you DOING_ ), but all seems well. _Really_ well considering, as they embrace, Ryan leans down and whispers something in her ear, and her giggle is soft and excited. In his arms, she’s so short by comparison that she looks more like his child than his...friend? Fuck buddy(ish)?

Just as they’re parting ways, Geoff comes in, already about four beers deep and steadily climbing. He claps both Ryan and Meg on the back, in a very _time to talk turkey_ way, and Ray brushes himself off, deciding that the moment’s officially over.

— —

All circumstances aside, Geoff knows how to throw one kick ass bash.

His estate has a breathtaking view of the city, as well as the pinkish oranges of the dying sun spilling down across it. Under normal circumstances, Geoff’s as taut as a piano wire whenever they’re all so out in the open, but any trace of those nerves is completely absent by six: Jack’s floating on the water, Geoff’s mixing some Malibu Sunsets at the pool bar with a cigarette sticking out his mouth, Lindsay’s emerging after doing a lap, and everyone else is either dipping their feet in or milling about on the deck. High-profile gangsters 364 days of the year, a drunk band of friends for the remaining one.

This is part of the reason Ray loves his job so damn much. Because, the questionable legality and high level of danger aside, all of that anxiety he was feeling? The uncertainty? Fucking forgotten, and all it took was about thirty-five minutes of socializing and one joint split between him and Gavin. Meg and Joel have the right idea, he decides. You don’t get this kind of shit working a desk job. Once he’s decently stoned, he even catches Ryan eyeing him at one point and breaks out into a sheepish grin.

Ryan just shakes his head when he sees, smiling behind the rim of his Diet Coke can, and Ray wonders why he ever stopped smoking—or, shit, why he isn’t just high _all the fucking time._

Around seven, he breaks away to the kitchen for some pineapple juice. Not that the Coke isn’t doing him any favors, but Michael brought some goodies, too, so he’s considerably more baked than he was an hour ago and, goddamnit, pineapple juice just sounds so fucking _good_ right now (“Good lord. You’re completely _pissed_ , Ray” “Shut up, Gavin”). Granted, he hasn’t had it since he was oh, in the single digits, but the weed doesn’t seem to give a shit about that, so neither does he. 

He hits the bathroom first, takes the piss of the century, and is charging full force back to the kitchen—a man on a mission—when he runs smack into Lindsay.

Well. More like she runs smack into _him_.

Their eyes meet, and for a moment he’s sober again. Because hers are red, like his, but also not like his at the same time. Not from pot. From _tears_. And Lindsay, she’s Burnie’s tough-talking, no-nonsense, lawyer sidekick extraordinaire. She eats dudes like the Crew for breakfast.

And she does not cry.

He says, “Lindsay?” She just sniffles, looking away. “Are you—”

Rough throat clear. “Yeah. Sorry.” He only has a moment to take in her face—flushed and raw, definitively wet, makeup a tracked mess down her cheeks—before she storms past him, toward Geoff’s main foyer. Ray can only stand and watch.

Out on the deck, Team Nice Dynamite are by one of the massive built-in stainless steel grills next to the bar, locked in what appears to be a heated conversation they weren’t having when Ray left. And if he was sober, that’d be his answer right there. But his brain is the equivalent of foggy cotton after not smoking for so long—he’s starting to think that that joint was sprinkled with a little something extra—so what does he do instead? He heads right for them, Coke can wielded in his hand like a sword.

At his “Yo, guys”, they turn very slowly, like they’d much rather not to. Stoned and oblivious, Ray says, “What’s up with Lindsay? I just saw her running out.”

“Yeah,” Michael says. Gavin, whose jaw is as tight as a spring, just looks away. “We know.”

“Right.” It occurs to Ray then just what he’s looking when he sees both of them white-knuckling their glasses, just a little too pink in the cheeks for people who have only had maybe three drinks. Maybe he should’ve just gotten that pineapple juice after all. 

After a twelve-second eternity, Gavin finally clears his throat, and he is not himself when he goes, “Well. I should probably go, too.”

“Gavin,” is all Michael says in reply, and almost helplessly at that. Suddenly Ray’s hit by a wave of discomfort, feeling very much like he’s intruding; this should be a private moment, something not meant to be seen or taken part in by anyone but them.

Gavin just shakes his head. In a thick voice, he says, “I ruined it.” Then he’s gone, almost in a run, heading for the sliding patio doors.

Michael watches him leave like his chest is being flayed wide open.

“Dude,” Ray says, “just tell him.”

That gets him a look that, for a moment, is honest and vulnerable, before Michael snaps back to his usual hectic, untroubled self. “Tell him what?”

Ray squeezes his Coke can. Maybe it’s the pot, but he could wring Michael’s fucking neck, and he feels like he damn well has the right to, given how long he strung things out with Ryan—and that _tone_. It’s the same goddamn voice Michael used on Thursday at the bar before that disaster of a heist, after Gavin returned and Michael had to disguise how he’d just awkwardly confessed their drunken escapade to Ray. It’s too gruff and too stiff and Ray doesn’t like it one goddamn bit.

“Okay, first of all: cut the shit.”

Michael’s eyes widen. “What?” It’s one of those rare days he’s opted to wear his glasses, which makes him seem a lot younger than he already looks.

“Stop pretending like you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, and for the love of _shit_ stop it with that stupid overly-manly bullshit you always pull after you get even remotely close to admitting you might like Gavin. Like...” Ray takes a frothy sip of Coke. Laughs a little, maybe at his own stoned boldness (is this what being drunk feels like?), maybe at the irony of it all. Regardless. “I’m sorry, bro, but you’re not fooling _anyone_.”

The rest of the patio is popping with chatter and activity, Michael’s forte, but at the moment he’s uncharacteristically silent. Good. Maybe he’s actually listening.

“I don’t know what that was about just now, but something’s not right between you guys, and no offense, but even if you don’t want to admit you’re catching feelings just yet, you two are kind of like, a really big fucking staple for this Crew. So you’re gonna be letting a lot of people down—me included—if you don’t fix whatever’s wrong.”

Michael just stares at him for the longest time. Ray makes the mistake of thinking he’s trying to find a way to tell Ray off, until that always-moving mouth finally opens.

And his voice is very small. 

“Lindsay really likes me, Ray.”

Ray sighs. “I know, man.” They all knew it. 

“I feel so fucking bad,” Michael says quietly, in this awful, trembling little voice Ray realizes he’s never heard before. On the other side of the pool, Ryan’s emerged onto the deck with Geoff and Jack, and he takes no time honing in on Ray. 

Michael’s visibly _not okay_ , even from a distance, and Ray answers that wordless question in Ryan’s eyes— _we’re good_ —with a nod that has Ryan flawlessly slipping back into conversation as if he never left to begin with. Michael’s too distracted to notice any of it, and thank God for that—it might’ve broken whatever… _this_ is. This new rawness.

“She, me, and Gav were all so tight before all of this bullshit. And shit, maybe things would’ve been easier if I’d just ignored it and fallen for her instead. I _was_ too, for a really long time. But Gavin just…”

Ray waits, but when it’s clear he’s not gonna get an ending to that, he prompts: “Gavin just?”

Michael blows out a breath. “I don’t _know_ , dude. He just _is_ , y’know? He’s my _boi_. I dunno, I can’t fucking explain it. But after he was around long enough, it just felt like I was leading Lindsay on.”

“Oh, _dude_.” Ray smirks, to which Michael raises a brow at him. “You’re fucked.”

It might be a trick of the light, but there’s a blush slipping into Michael’s cheeks. “Fuck you mean?”

“I mean you’re so far _gone_. Like, do you hear yourself? You’re in _loooove_.”

“With _Gavin_?” Michael says, disbelieving; his voice goes a little too high, earning him an amused, questioning look from the Gents. Quieter, Michael continues: “Dude. Ray. You do know what you just said, right?”

“I fucking do, and you know what, Michael, I meant it, too. Fight me.”

Michael groans. “Fuck off.”

“Fine. But, Michael— _TALK TO HIM_. Seriously.” When Ray goes to look at Ryan, he finds those blue eyes already waiting for him. The move, which used to unnerve him, now floods him with relief, and it’s not just the weed. That’s something he could get used to. “Trust me. It’s _so_ much better when you do.”

The gasp he gets for that one is actually _audible_. “Wait a minute. Did you—”

“Yeah.” Ray turns back, looking Michael right in his stunned face. “I did. And it’s a helluva lot easier to get it over with than to drown in tension for the rest of your goddamn life. Okay?”

Michael just goes, “Dude.”

“What? Is it that hard to believe?”

“Kind of.” Now he’s smirking. Fucker. “No offense.”

“Guess that should encourage you, then, if even _I_ could do it.” Ray steps in closer, so much so that Michael’s eyebrows shoot up. “Tell him, dude.”

Loud, long sigh. Nonetheless, there’s a contemplative look on Michael’s face. “I don’t wanna hurt Lindsay. Her or Gavin.”

“Well, you’re gonna _kill_ both of them if you keep holding back. Somebody’s gotta lose here, so just rip the fucking Band-Aid. Get it over with.”

“Ugh. This is so fucking twisted.” Michael looks at Ray helplessly. “Gavin’s a _guy_ , and sometimes all I wanna do is kiss him until he shuts up. The fuck’s _wrong_ with me?”

“Michael. You know my choice in men and still you’re asking me that?”

“...You know what? That’s a good point.”

Ray grins. “And anyways, dude, it’s _Gavin_. The worst that’s gonna happen is he’s gonna squeak or trip or start blabbering in European. You’ll be _fine_.”

Michael shakes his head, but the smile on his face looks a little like love. “True enough.”

— —

“Nice bite mark,” someone above him says.

Ryan chuckles, looking up from his phone. “You like it? I grew it myself.”

“Clever.” Meg climbs onto the chair across from him (literally she _climbs_ ; it’s a tall table, so she has to literally clamber onto it) and sets a crisp-looking mojito down on a coaster.

“So,” she says without malice. “You and Ray?”

“That’s the hope.”

She raises a manicured brow. “Oh?”

“Not yet,” Ryan affirms, gazing out across the deck to where Ray and Geoff are busting up laughing about something— _really_ busting up, from the way Geoff’s laugh has climbed to that high, hysterical place. God. It’s only an hour after sunset, and another five or six hours before anybody’s even _considering_ bedtime, leaving his plan to all but kidnap Ray a good distance out. And normally Ryan has the patience of an ox, but a man can only come so close to sinking his teeth into something he’s been dying to taste for literally _months_ before all bets are off. The only hope left at this point is that the alcohol goes to everyone’s heads sooner rather than later, otherwise he might just throw Ray over his shoulder and haul ass, with or without an audience. “Still working out the kinks.”

“Pun intended?”

He sends her a wicked look. “With any luck, yeah.”

She laughs softly, swirling her straw around in her drink. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Fine.” A shrug, accompanied by an intent stare at the contents of the mojito. (If she’s questioning its taste, Ryan doesn’t blame her; Geoff was about seven beers in when he made it for her.) “A little overwhelmed, honestly, but fine.”

“After a few weeks, it’ll feel like nothing, I promise.”

“I know.” She smirks at him. “You just have to remember I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m going in as a virgin.”

“If it makes you feel any better, we’re gonna be jumping in a police sergeant soon. So the law will more or less be on our side.”

“Wow.” She looks impressed, really speaking volumes of her inexperience. “How’d you manage to do _that_?”

“He volunteered himself.” Ryan recalls the guy Ray mentioned earlier, who he now knows is named Jeremy Dooley and has quite the presence on social media (Ray had left the card on the couch, and the opportunistic Ryan couldn’t resist going back to read it). “You’d be surprised how often that happens. Even with supposed model citizens.”

“ _Everyone._ ” Geoff comes booming in from across the patio, cutting all conversation short. Eyes on him, just the way he likes it, Geoff’s grin is broad and very drunk. “First and foremost, thank you all for coming tonight. And a special thanks to the guest of honor, Meg Turney, the Crew’s first official business partner.”

Golf claps. Meg, looking a touch embarrassed, smiles and bows in her chair. The move reminds Ryan of Ray and has him smiling rather fondly at her.

“Now _normally_ I’m not the type to spread my wings,” Geoff says. “I play it close to the vest and keep it in the family. _However_ , that being said, Ryan did an especially good job of convincing me to give Ms. Turney a chance, and I can’t say I’m anything but impressed with her credentials. So well done, to both of you.” 

Meg giggles. “Thank you, Geoff.” He raises his rocks glass—Devil’s Cut bourbon, his favorite—and everyone else follows suit.

Except Ryan.

He stays put, hunched forward with his elbows on the table and fingers steepled before his mouth, looking bizarrely troubled. It sticks out like a sore thumb, taking Geoff only a few moments to see and interpret.

Just as Ryan intended. 

“Everything alright there, Mad King?”

Ryan’s smile is wooden. “Just a little something I disagree with, Geoff. It’s nothing.”

But the boss is just shaking his head. “No, no, no. If Ryan The Poker Face Guy Haywood looks worried, it’s not a nothing, it’s a big fat _something_. So speak your peace, my boy. We’re all friends here.”

“It’s definitely something,” Jack quips. “Normally he’s a much better liar, too.”

Nervous laughter breaks out. Meg looks to Ryan, gnawing her glossy lower lip anxiously.

With a shrug, he says, “I just think now’s the perfect time to start outgrowing that ‘keep it in the family’ attitude. That’s all.”

Geoff knits his brow. Now nobody’s talking, either, so, sighing, Ryan pushes on.

“I’ve been listening around lately, and that last heist really fucked us. Everybody in the city who wants to challenge us is seeing it as the perfect opportunity to do just that.”

“Because we didn’t shoot a man before he had time to activate an alarm?” Geoff demands. “Shit happens. How does that make us look weak?”

“Not because of that, Geoff,” Ryan says, eyes cool. “Because of Joel.”

That earns him a reaction: a few murmurs, some uneasy glances exchanged here and there. Ray is looking at him with a question on his face, which Ryan offers an answer to: “Because he called the heat off. People talk, Geoff. You think they wouldn’t find out we needed a _cop_ to babysit us?”

Geoff, who’s a little rosy in the cheeks, doesn’t back down. “Back when the Aztecas weren’t a complete joke, they had _dozens_ of dirty cops on their payroll. That doesn’t damage street cred, that should fucking _enhance_ it.”

“I agree, but not like that. Not with us sweating and bleeding underneath a rotten pier with no Plan B and one of our own shot in the leg. It makes us look like we begged him to do it.” Ryan pauses, chewing the inside of his cheek to ensure he looks contemplative. “It makes us look like we can’t clean up our messes. _That_ damages street cred.”

“He’s got a point, Geoff,” Michael says, not withering even when Geoff shoots him a heated look. Ryan, who’s been nothing but annoyed with the kid since he joined the Crew, actually feels impressed; _him_ standing up to Geoff Ramsey is one thing. But Michael doing it? And _agreeing_ with Ryan in the process? Sky’s falling. “People in this city _hate_ cops—shit, we used to shoot ’em by the fucking dozen.”

“Well.” Geoff’s eyes cut right into Ryan as he says, “When Heyman offered himself up, the lot of you certainly seemed _enthralled_.”

Ryan sighs. “I’m not saying—”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Geoff snaps. “Call off Heyman’s initiation and send him back to the station with a Get Well Soon card? If he was smart, he’d sell us out the first change he fucking _got_ if we fucked him over like that. I’m not taking that kind of a risk.”

“Not that,” Ryan says, an icy calm compared to Geoff’s mounting heat.

“Then _what_?”

“Geoff,” Jack says quietly.

“What? They’re making me nervous.” Geoff gestures grandly at nothing. “In front of a _guest_!”

“Ryan,” Meg whispers, “maybe this isn’t—”

Impatient to be interrupted, Ryan says loudly, “How long do you think we can keep going as a six-man Crew?”

His volume—so unlike his usual velvety baritone—makes Meg jump, but across the deck Geoff only glares at him. “Fuck if I know. Forever, so long as none of you play with your explosives first.”

“That’s gonna land us on top?”

“The fuck? You heard me yesterday, Ryan.” Geoff sticks his neck out ( _all the more reason to step on it_ , thinks Ryan). “I don’t give a fuck about being on top. What I do give a fuck about is my _family_ and having the time of our lives. Nothing more.”

“So when the high-profile targets start wising up to our antics?” Ryan challenges. “When a bigger, better crew steps up to the plate and six of us won’t do it anymore? What then? We gonna have Heyman swoop in and take out two dozen men with his squad car? Or maybe we can lead them into a bank and have Meg finish them off? That’ll be the time of our lives, alright.”

Geoff’s back visibly stiffens, but it’s Ray who says, “ _Ryan_ ” in this strong, no-fucking-around voice that thickens the layer of ice over the whole patio. Ryan has to physically fight the urge to back off—he’s really pushing it, a lot harder than he intended—but he’s held his tongue long enough. Been distracted (no thanks to Ray) _long enough_. He’s had plans, and has no intention of stalling them for much longer; he didn’t take that phone call from Burnie so long ago just to get stuck with the same five coworkers and no goals. 

“The longer we keep this up, the more respect we lose, Geoff. People won’t _fear_ us.” Different angle. Ryan has the creeping suspicion that Geoff’s lying—that he gives a fuck about his family, having the time of their lives, but also the way people think of him, too—and hopes this might get him somewhere. “A host can’t get the same virus twice. The Maze Bank’s already sharpened itself against whatever magic trick you bought from Lester, and that disaster on the beach is only the beginning. If we don’t stay ahead of the curve, we’ll fall behind, period. Crime is like anything else: it evolves.”

“So you’re telling me one little fuckup during a heist is gonna screw us. _Really._ ”

“I’m saying that if we’d had even seven men, that little fuckup wouldn’t have even happened, and we would’ve walked away with twice the haul.”

“ _Like I give a damn_ ,” Geoff bellows. “Look around you, Ryan! We’re all still here, and we’re all still rich as dicks. We made a mistake, so during the next heist, we won’t. You said so yourself: you can’t get the same virus twice.” 

“You don’t give a damn?” When Ryan looks Jack’s way, their eyes meet for a sizzling, fleeting second before Jack wrenches away. And Ryan can tell: it’s a fruitless attempt to hide what Jack knows Ryan can see in his eyes.

_Doubt._

“How about Jack?” he says. “He took a bullet to the calf. Does _he_ give a damn?”

Geoff glowers. “He’s had worse—”

“And that’s your business model?” Surged by a wave of itchy impatience, Ryan says, “If you give so much of a fuck about your family, why don’t you ask them what _they_ think?”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Geoff snarls, but the heat in his voice is cooling. Growing icy. Ryan nearly trembles with excitement. “I was _talking_.”

“Ask them.” Ryan holds their stare, feeling very much like he’s looking into a black hole (and loving every second of it). “See what they think.”

Silence, and a painful one at that. At last, Geoff takes a pull from his glass and says, “So let’s say I do expand, because that’s what this is about, right? Pick up some mercenaries, some dealers, some hired guns, just like the crew I used to work for did. You know what I see happening, Ryan? Now there’ll be quicker, easier heists, but less of a cut for everyone at the end of the day. Now there’ll be more mouths to feed and more paychecks to sign. I see chaos. Betrayal. Everything will get too big and out of hand; everyone will start having different agendas and wanting different things. Everything will _fall apart_. This city might be full of criminals for hire, but I don’t know them. What the hell good would they do me if their only loyalty to me is a salary?”

“Well, you could probably find a helluva lot better than _Gavin_ to take along on heists.” Ryan meets the eyes of the Brit in question. “No offense.”

Deathly quiet, Geoff growls, “You fucking watch yourself, Haywood.”

Ryan takes in a sharp breath at the sting of venom but, deep down, he’s secretly delighted. Geoff is looking at him like he wants to tear Ryan’s heart clean from his chest, and Ryan couldn’t be happier about it, because _that’s_ the Geoff that hired him. The Geoff that’s been terrorizing Los Santos since the moment he set foot in it. Geoff the ruthless, savage criminal who drenches the streets in blood, not Geoff the lazy, greedy king who’s been gradually slipping from his throne. Ryan has, without question, the strongest bloodlust out of any of them, and he’s known that from the start, but too many times now, during a heist or sometimes just sitting in the Phantom while they’re at a stoplight, Ryan can see: Geoff’s _close_. People make the mistake of thinking he’s carefree, but Geoff didn’t get to where he is today, drunk and partying in a gigantic hillside fortress, by going with the flow. He got there through blood, sweat, and pain. And there will be times when something thrashing and dark, so dark and so _familiar_ that it makes Ryan shiver, will slip between the cracks, often too quick for anyone to notice. No one except Ryan, that is, because he notices _everything_ and so many little teases and peeks of it have left him famished, hungry and desperate for more. More of the _real_ Geoff, the one he saw back on that beach with Jack’s leg running red with blood and the cops hot on their heels—the one that, for a moment, looked like he could destroy the entire city of putting a bullet in one of his own.

It has potential. It also feels like home, and Ryan wants it there, always. 

“Guys,” Jack says behind an awkward little laugh. Nobody else seems to dare move or breathe; in the distance, the traffic-congested hum of Los Santos plays like a lullaby. “We’re all here supposed to be having fun. Can’t we just enjoy the party?”

Geoff’s eerie new calm does not lift. “Ask him.”

“Geoff—”

“Matter of fact, you seem so certain we’re going to fail...you know something I don’t, Ryan?”

“Geoff, _enough_ ,” Michael butts in, exasperated. “He doesn’t, and you know it.”

Geoff sips his whiskey. “So you agree with him?”

“Whether I do or don’t doesn’t matter.” But Michael’s hesitant, and Ryan feels a private little surge of joy. “But Jack’s right. Party now, business later.”

“I agree,” Ryan pipes up, doing his best to look contrite. “I’m sorry, Geoff, I knew I shouldn’t have brought anything up. That was my fault.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Geoff mutters as he finishes his whiskey, but the fight is clearly leaving his body. “Apologize to my son.”

Ryan has to stifle a laugh. Seriously? Geoff talks a convincing game when it comes to disrespecting that boy, but he cares so much he’d need a 747 to really hide it.

Geoff’s waiting so, like the naughty little boy he is, Ryan says, “I’m sorry, Gavin.”

“It’s fine.” Gavin’s just looking at Geoff, kind of awed. Ryan can’t say he doesn’t understand.

As everyone starts talking and loosening up again, he glances at Ray, then his phone. Fuck this—that confrontation with Geoff rewound him all over. He’ll give it til midnight. Then all bets are off.

There’s also a text waiting for him, and for a moment, he's distracted, smiling as he replies.

— —

The party stretches on and on, delirious and hysterical into the dark hours of the night. Geoff lays out a literal buffet for dinner and with Los Santos twinkling below like a thousand burning stars, they eat better than they have in weeks, which is saying something. It’s more or less shaped up to be the best night of their lives, even after the little disruption earlier. Whatever that was between Ryan and Geoff earlier is seemingly buried by dessert, anyways, by which time everybody’s adequately drunk and laughing and life has never been better.

Not long after, though, those eight hours of sleep Ray failed to get the night before hit him like a truck.

To be fair, that joint probably didn’t help; a few hours after the fact, Michael informed him that it was laced after all, with cocaine (otherwise known as a “cocoa puff”, which sounds a lot cuter and friendlier than it really is). But it’s not even one AM, Ray’s _prime_ waking hour, when he should be dancing around his living room or balls deep in a game on his Xbox, and instead he’s on one of the pool chairs being shaken awake by two dripping wet hands on his shoulders. 

“Oh, Geoff,” Ray moans as he cracks open his eyes, “you got my hoodie wet.”

“What, like it was so clean to begin with?”

“It’s _Versace_.”

“Oh my god,” Geoff mutters, “go to _bed_ , Ray. I don’t want us to have to carry you inside.”

“Again,” Jack chimes in from the water.

Ray squints against the harsh cyan glow of the pool lights; Geoff’s glistening with pool water, in a pair of swim trunks with his spectacular ink on full display. How long was he out? Geoff was still in a shirt and shorts last Ray remembers.

“I don’t have a ride,” he says.

“No shit. Go pick a guest room.” Geoff’s slurring considerably, but his grin is nothing less than kind. “You know you’re always welcome here, Ray. _Mi casa es su casa._ ”

Ray smirks. “Thanks, boss.”

“ _Any time._ ”

And so Ray hauls ass back to the house, held up by his sheer desire to get to his favorite guest room—second floor, fourth door to the right; it comes with a water bed and a fucking _bean bag chair fortress_. The deck is completely and utterly trashed from dinner, dotted with random cans, bottles, and dishes. Save for Geoff, Jack, and Burnie, who are chatting in the hot tub, the rest of the Crew seems to have scattered for the night, which is to be expected. Geoff’s property is 25 acres, with 20,000 square feet of house.

Ray’s so tired that, for a moment, he thinks he’s not going see any of them for the rest of the night.

He’s so tired that he almost _forgets_ , until he reaches the first flight of stairs, and—

Ryan. 

He’s at the top, sitting, of all things. Waiting. But Ray only comes up to the top step, stops, and just looks at him, because he is so _wiped_ , he’s been run through the emotional ringer too many goddamn times and he’s crashing so hard from that coke (fuck you, Michael) that he doesn’t even consider it at first. Can’t even fathom what the fuck it is Ryan wants besides to sit at the top of a staircase for some mysterious goddamn reason.

“What’s up?” Ray says, as if he and Ryan are meeting for Saturday morning coffee. What he’d really wanted to say was _we have to stop meeting like this_ or something equally stupid/witty, but his brain is a few steps behind. 

As expected, instead of answering, Ryan just watches him for a moment, arms draped over his legs. Of course, _he_ doesn’t look tired at all, whereas Ray imagines he looks like death warmed over in a crusty purple sweatshirt. In what universe is _that_ fair?

Eventually, all Ryan has to say is, “Let’s go.”

Ray opens his mouth, to ask _Where?_ But then he looks again, and sees the promising glimmer in Ryan’s dark eyes, and he’s not wondering anymore.

— —

The Zentorno’s just purred it’s way past the gate when Ray realizes just how completely unprepared for this he is.

Ryan takes them out of the opulent Vinewood Hills neighborhood Geoff resides in, down toward Richman. An upside of being so nervous—again—is that Ray’s now wide awake. A downside is he’s sweating bullets and Ryan isn’t talking, which somehow makes it even more nerve-wracking, and goddamn if there was ever a time to smoke a bowl, now would be fucking it.

“You still carry cigarettes on you, Ryan?”

Without taking his eyes off the road, Ryan says, “Yeah, side pocket on the door. Why?”

“Just wondering.” Ray spots the glossy red pack and shakes one out, thanking his past self for keeping Gavin’s cheap Bic lighter in his pocket (a total accident, but such a happy one, in the end). 

He’s barely taken the first, relieving drag when the warning comes: “No smoking in the car.”

“Sorry. I’m on edge.”

“Why?” Ryan murmurs. “What’s there to be nervous about?”

Ray just laughs, quiet and uncommitted. For a second he’s actually convinced it’s a joke. “You’re funny.”

But Ryan’s not laughing. “Put it out, Ray.”

“Ryan—”

“Put it out.” There’s so much ice there that it makes Ray do a double take. Ryan’s watching the light, but he has something severe to the angles of his face that wasn’t there a minute ago. Something that says he’s not to be questioned or fucked with. 

“Oh-kaaaay,” Ray says cautiously, dutifully flicking it out the window. The light turns green, but Ryan doesn’t let up on the clutch until Ray’s done, taking them into second then third across the intersection.

They drive for awhile in silence; at this hour after a Saturday night, partygoers, bums, and the occasional gangbanger are the only things on the streets. Unsure of what to say, Ray just mutters, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not me I’m worried about.”

“Like I said. I’m nervous.”

Ryan laughs softly. It unnerves Ray a hell of a lot more than it should.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Mmm.” A thoughtful hum. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“And when we get there.” Ray looks at Ryan’s profile, smooth and unruffled again. His voice is quiet. “What do you plan to do then?”

Without pause, Ryan says, “What I should have done to you on that couch if you hadn’t stopped me.”

Ray spits out a stunned laugh. “So that’s it, Ryan? No talking, no deciding? You’re just driving me somewhere it’s safe to fuck?”

They’ve approached another red, one Ray knows tends not to stay red for long, but before he knows what’s happening the car’s in neutral and Ryan is _right_ there in his face, growling—

“Yes, Ray, I am driving you somewhere it’s safe to fuck you, like I wanted to earlier today, and yesterday, and the day before that and probably the day before that. I am driving you somewhere it’s safe to fuck you, and I am also driving you somewhere it’s safe to make you understand exactly what you are to me—where I can make you understand it _so_ well and _so_ deeply that you’ll never, _ever_ forget it. _That_ is what I am fucking doing, and I like you, and I know you’re nervous, but I’m literally on the edge of exploding and I can’t wait. So fucking _sue_ me.”

Ray can only stare, paralyzed. Breathing in deep, Ryan retreats after a moment and calmly puts the car in gear right as the light turns green like nothing ever happened. The Zentorno cruises forward. 

In a rasp, Ray says, “Turn the car around, Ryan.”

“No.”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

Ryan utters a laugh like broken glass. “You think I don’t know that?”

“You’re too intense.” Ray hugs himself, the last thing he can do to keep from shaking clean out of his skin. “I don’t know—I’m afraid. I’m afraid of _you_.”

Ryan smiles viciously, but his eyes don’t leave the road. “Guess that makes two of us.”

“What? You’re afraid of _me_? Fucking _please_ , Ryan.”

“Yeah.” Ryan’s breath is shaking, the first detectable betrayal of his composure. “I’m like you. I’m afraid that, if we do this, you’ll be one of the last people who will ever be able to hurt me.”

Ray just breathes, because he’s suddenly out of things to say and that’s all he can do. The honesty shocks him so much that he just blurts out the first—and probably not the best, in hindsight—thing on his mind:

“Bullshit.”

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to hurt?” Ryan demands, frustrated. “You think I don’t understand _pain_?”

“No,” Ray snarls, “I think the only thing you understand is how to destroy.”

“You’re wrong, Ray.” Ryan practically moans it out in despair. “God, you’re so wrong, and you _know_ it. You asked Heyman about me because you want to know me, all of me. You want _me_ in my entirety.”

“I asked him because I wanted to see if you were as sick as I originally thought,” Ray hisses—a lie, one he has to force from deep within, but he’s blind to anything rational. Ryan has a knack for bringing out this side of him. “And I was _right_.”

Ryan’s laughing, hysterical and mindless into the night. “I don’t believe you. Not for one goddamn second.” He drops down into third and takes a corner far too fast, so unlike him, making Ray slam into his own arm rest. At last Ryan’s frayed edges are beginning to show. “Let me in, Ray. For fuck’s _sake_ , just let me in. Stop fucking fighting me.”

“Fuck you,” Ray whispers.

“Stop fighting what you already know.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

As they head for a freeway entrance, they sail past a group of smartly-dressed young people walking down the sidewalk, who whoop at the Zentorno’s retreating taillights; Ryan shows his teeth, and Ray wonders if any of them could even _imagine_ what’s going on inside the car right now.

“Tell me this, Ray: do you hesitate because I’m a man? Because of the things I’ve done? Tell me, for the love of _Christ_ , so I can _fix_ it.”

“Where are we going?”

“Answer me.”

But he shakes his head. This was a mistake. This _can’t_ work and _won’t_ work and he was an idiot for trying. They hit Olympic Freeway and the world beyond the windows looks like streaks of watercolor. “I can’t.”

“You can, and I will circle this entire city until the fucking sun comes up until you do.”

“Shut up—”

“ _You know me_ ,” Ryan shouts, for seemingly the first time ever, and they’re in fifth gear before Ray can so much as blink. Terrified, he looks down at the speedometer: 98 and climbing. “You know me, Ray, better than anyone ever has. Better than I think I know _myself_ , sometimes. _Why_ are you holding yourself back? What’s _stopping_ you?”

“Ryan, _slow down_ —”

“Answer me.”

“Ryan, you are doing 110, _slow the fuck_ —”

“— _ANSWER ME_ —”

“ _BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT FUCKING SAFE, OKAY!?_ ”

Ryan slams on the brakes.

Ray, who almost saw that coming at this point, has to brace himself, and _hard_ , to keep from splitting his head open on the dashboard. The tires utter a loud roar of protest on asphalt as they skid to a stop, leaving them idling in the far right lane; Ray’s seatbelt bites down, constricting him so tightly it feels like it could break ribs. Or maybe that’s just his madly beating heart.

Slowly, Ryan cuts the engine, throwing everything—including himself—into silence. When he looks at Ray, he’s blank.

“You’re not safe,” Ray whispers. “I’m not afraid of you because you could hurt me. I’m afraid of you because I _want_ you to.” 

Ryan just looks at him. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing.

“You have no idea or, shit, maybe you do.” Sadly, Ray laughs. “I don’t know anymore. But I’ve thought about it, Ryan, in detail, and it’s not you fucking me over a couch until I have bruises, or choking me until I pass out. It’s you cutting me. _Killing_ me. I’ve seen how much you like it.”

In the commuter lane, a pickup with a dude in the bed flies past honking its horn, the guy shouting something before they disappear around a bend. Ryan’s still.

“And I think,” Ray whispers, “if I asked you to, you’d do it.”

Ryan looks down at the wheel, then out at the road. The smell of burnt rubber is just now starting to hit.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Ray says. “It’s dangerous.” But Ryan doesn’t budge. Even from the side, he looks lost. And Ray can’t, for the life of him, decide if it’s good or bad. If he broke them, the chance of them, forever, or trapped Ryan so good that he never wants to leave

Ray’s not sure which one he wants more, either.

It’s so quiet on the surrounding highway that Ryan’s voice emerging from the calm actually startles Ray: “I have one question.”

Ray’s head throbs. He doesn’t want to hear it, but he has no fight left. “Yeah.”

“Does the thought of me hurting you scare you?” Ryan whispers. “Or the thought of you wanting it?”

And Ray doesn’t answer. His tiredness has returned, full force. Besides, he hardly needs to say a thing. Ryan already knows. 

“Between the two of us?” Ryan says, almost gently. “Maybe I’m not the one you’re afraid of.”

Ray trembles, turning back toward the window; more cars are approaching, honking and flashing their brights as they go by. He won’t even try to deny it, as easy as it would be the blame it all on Ryan—to say that Ryan’s been picking him apart and changing him and making him into something ugly. But he hasn’t. And that’s what scares Ray most of all. 

Eventually, Ryan turns the car over.

— —

They pull off at the next exit—the Tataviam Mountains. The first place Ray set foot after he killed without remorse. As they pass the long-destroyed barrier arm guarding the road, Ray lets out an exhale that fogs up the window.

It feels like coming home, after months away at war. 

Ryan drives for a while on the bumpy dirt road, and doesn’t stop until the dark, glass-like surface of the reservoir rises up beside them. Nothing’s really changed except for the water level, which has decently risen after winter. The headlights of the Zentorno catches a deer just before it bounds off into the brush. 

After a moment, Ryan cuts the engine and looks, almost dreamlike, out at the dusty service road lying ahead. Ray lays back against his headrest and closes his eyes.

“That night—the night we brought Trevor here and dumped the body…” Ryan trails off, and his brief silence might even be hesitation. “I’ve never told anybody about my wife before, Ray. Not a single soul.”

“Then why me?” Ray whispers.

“I don’t know,” Ryan murmurs, reclining the seat back a touch. “Because you were different. Even back then, I was sure of it.”

“You hardly knew me.”

“Yeah, but I’d read about you. Saw where you’d come from, what molded you. There’s a very particular kind of personality that goes with that sort of person, Ray, and I saw it in you.” Ryan folds his arms behind his head. “I saw it. And the minute I saw it, I understood it, probably better than I’ve ever understood anything.”

Ray recalls earlier, when he tried to imagine Ryan after he’d killed his father but all Ray could see was the knife he’d pointed at himself. A little afraid to ask, he breathes, “How?”

“Easy. I understood it because you feel like home.”

Ray damn near stops breathing.

Ryan goes on, softly, as if reciting a poem he wrote, “I understood you the way I would understand if I’d spent my entire life missing an arm, or a leg, and suddenly found it after years of looking. It became a feeling of discovery, then relief—like, _oh_ , there you are, finally, after all this time I finally have you.” Now he looks toward Ray, and his eyes are more tender than Ray’s ever seen. “Like you’d finally come home, and so had I.”

“Ryan,” Ray whispers.

“Too much?” Ryan asks, seeing it in the way only he can. Ray manages a nod, too taut to speak, and Ryan smiles sadly. “Sorry. This is all new for me.”

“Me, too.”

“I don’t really get close to people. It’s not like I don’t want to, or I hide. It’s that I’m not really able to...connect. Never have been, really.”

“I know.”

“One of the things I love about you,” Ryan says softly. “You know me and you don’t even have to try.”

“I tried convincing myself I didn’t.” It feels strange, admitting that out loud for the first time. But it’s true. 

Ryan nods, unoffended. “I know.”

Ray stares at him a moment longer, and there’s no safety net left to catch him, utterly exhausted, as he gives in for good.

Ryan’s voice has a new, raw edge to it: “Backseat.”

So Ray gets out. Ryan could ask him to kill at this point and he would.

In the backseat of the Zentorno, Ray’s only just managed to get his ass on the seat and his door shut before Ryan is yanking him into his lap. Not that he’s expecting any less, but—Hell, he’s still a ball of nerves until the reconnection of their heated, feverish bodies, and like that everything but Ryan blissfully melts away.

They go into their first kiss shuddering, shaking with the feel of one another, and it’s considerably more tender than what they exchanged in the family room earlier. Personally, Ray likes it this way; he’s the last guy to want to be treated delicately in the bedroom, but the sticky heat of Ryan’s mouth and the desire radiating from his body and his _tongue_ , good God, it’s all so much better taken in stride. Slowed enough that he can actually savor every minute of it.

Alone, there are far fewer boundaries, and Ryan gets his hands underneath Ray’s shirt in no time at all, only this is not like before, where he was feeling and testing before he moved. This is Ryan after he’s learned Ray, and is holding him to bring him as close as possible; this is Ryan being _possessive_ , and Ray fucking loves it. Never mind he’s fully, achingly hard just from a minute of making out and hands pressed into his back. He needs Ryan to touch him, always—he’s not even sure how he survived so long without it.

At one point, Ryan separates from Ray just long enough to breathe, “ _You taste so fucking good._ ”

A bolt of pained desperation goes through Ray. “Oh God,” he whispers, tangling his hands in Ryan’s hair, “come _here_.”

The windows are starting to steam from their thoughtless moaning by the time Ryan pulls back again to take Ray’s shirt off and fling it somewhere onto the front seats; when he comes back, he starts a shivering path of bites down from the side of Ray’s neck to his shoulder, several of which will surely bruise later, leaving Ray alone and trembling above him. 

“What are you going to—oh God— _do_ to me?” he gasps out.

“Everything,” Ryan says, breathless, and with the hand he doesn’t have anchored to Ray’s waist, he’s stroking the scars, fine-tuning Ray until he’s _whining_ , desperately grinding himself down on Ryan. “ _Look_ at you. You want it so fucking bad, don’t you?”

“Shut up and fuck me,” Ray chokes. But maybe Ryan is a big fat tease after all, because he just chuckles and sucks on the side of Ray’s neck, meeting him thrust for agonizing thrust. “Ryan, _please_.”

“Begging?” Ryan whispers in his ear, making Ray’s entire body break out in chills. “That’s not like you at all, Ray.”

Ray grits his teeth, frantic to chase the friction mounting between his legs. But then Ryan stills and he _swears_ he’s gonna lose it right here.

“ _Ryan—_ ”

“Off,” Ryan orders calmly.

Mindless, Ray sits beside him. Ryan watches him with hungry eyes that oppose the steadiness of his voice. “Pants.”

And Ray, who’s not the type to be bossed around so _easily_ , complies immediately. His fingers only hesitate at the band of his boxers, and just for a second, as if realizing all of a sudden just what he’s about to be doing. But, _God_ , he really doesn’t even give a shit anymore. He can’t because it’s _Ryan_ , and with Ryan, he’d do anything, and everything, no matter fucking what. So off those come, too.

When he looks back at Ryan, he’s completely nude, too, except for his socks, and he’s staring right at Ray. Both of them seem to still. Taking the other in.

Ryan speaks first, quietly: “Jesus.”

Instinctively, Ray wants to avert his eyes, embarrassed, but Ryan’s eyes are scraping along him with such _desire_ that he can’t bring himself to. His own newness to this is coming back to haunt him; he’s seen other dudes naked, sure, but never like this. Never with the other guy rock hard (like him) and in the backseat of a car, in the middle of nowhere, getting ready to fuck him. His entire face is engulfed in flames.

“In the glove compartment,” Ryan rasps, and for a second Ray doesn’t move, confused, before Ryan gives him a cheeky look and all at once, he just _gets it_.

“Oh dude. You keep some in your _car_?”

“Hey, you never know when you might need it.”

“Gross,” Ray mutters, but truthfully, he’s nervous as all fuck. He’s given it to a few girls in the ass, which was never really his thing anyways—he could never quite get over the fact that it was, well, _an asshole_ , no matter how much they thought playing with it would get him to forget that—but actually _taking_ it is blindingly new territory. And, when he was gazing at Ryan’s delectable body, he saw: the guy’s not exactly lacking in what he’s going to give Ray.

He must be obvious about it, because Ryan says softly, “Hey.” Their eyes meet. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Ray just exhales, shaky, and crawls so he’s between the seats and can reach the front. He can only assume Ryan’s experienced enough to know what he’s doing; he can only trust him.

As he rifles around in the glove box and finds, distastefully, a box of condoms in addition to a half-used thing of Astroglide, what happens next really _shouldn’t_ surprise him, given the position he’s in: on his knees and squeezed between the two front seats, his ass basically _hanging_ front of Ryan. But he still manages to jump and drop the bottle back into the compartment when he feels Ryan’s hands jerk his legs apart like a wishbone and his tongue—

Oh.

_Fuck._

“ _Ryan_ ,” Ray shouts, and there’s nothing to hold onto up here except the seat as Ryan, he—holy shit, okay, Ray’s never been rimmed before, nor he has ever done it to anyone, so he always thought it was a little _silly_ people could enjoy it, but now? Now, it’s a little clearer.

Because Ryan, he’s got Ray’s legs spread and is licking him open so slow and so _good_ that before Ray even knows what’s happening, he drops his arms and shamelessly arches his back, backed right up against Ryan’s mouth. Fuck what that makes him look like. He wants whatever Ryan has to give him and he never wants it to stop.

As Ryan plays with him, he idly strokes Ray’s cock, and Ray’s so brainless, moaning into the leather of the seat, that he barely notices the first finger go in. Not until it slips out and is replaced by Ryan’s tongue, which Ray sure as _fuck_ notices because it doesn’t even meet _resistance_ , that’s how worked over he is.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he cries out. Both of his hands are clenched helplessly next to his head. “What are you _doing_?” 

“I told you,” Ryan says quietly, licking a stripe down Ray’s taint to his balls, then back up. Ray whimpers outright and bucks into the hand around his dick. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“I’m gonna fucking come,” Ray gasps.

Ryan laughs, and all at once Ray feels himself being jerked back onto the seat. He doesn’t even realize how shaky his legs are until he’s sitting back down. 

“There’s not enough room in here,” Ryan says, out of breath, “for what I want to do to you. Go outside.” His lips are glistening. 

Ray’s eyes widen, mind awhirl all at once. _“What I want to do to you”?_ “Ryan—”

“Outside.” Ryan’s voice is soft in volume, but hard in tone. Demanding. The tantalizing heat in his gaze nearly makes Ray sweat. “I’m not asking.”

“Goddamn,” Ray mutters. “Pushy fuck, aren’t you?”

“You give me attitude again and I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll dent the hood.” His playful side is back for a moment as he smirks. “Then I’ll tell Geoff _exactly_ where it came from.”

“You fucking _wouldn’t_ —”

With hands a lot stronger than Ray had imagined (okay, fantasized), Ryan pulls him out of the car. 

Ray can’t even get his mouth open to complain about all the manhandling before Ryan drops him to the ground, and backs him up against the car with a maddening, head-spinning kiss. The kind that makes you not only forget what you were going to say next, but everything else in existence, really. Helpless, Ray moans and holds onto Ryan for dear life. Around them, the night is quiet and cold, but it can do nothing to penetrate their blinding heat.

When Ryan pulls away, the heads of their erections brush together, making both of them _groan_ in a new and wonderful way. “Bend over the hood,” Ryan chokes out. “Make sure you’re nice and spread out for me.”

So Ray does. And it’s a little humiliating at first, bent over and on full display like this. But fuck it if he can even give a damn anymore. 

Ryan slams the passenger side door, making the Zentorno rock some, and circles the front of the car slowly, eyes on Ray like a man approaching the first meal he’s had in months. Ray, who’s got his elbows braced on the hood, ducks his head a little, afraid he might combust if he fries under Ryan’s gaze much longer.

Calmly, Ryan says, “Put your head down on the metal and your hands behind your back.”

Ray shakily complies. His head is a mess of confusion and embarrassment and a hot, scratching desire so potent it blinds him to anything else. He doesn’t want this. This isn’t _him_. But he _does_ want it, more than anything, more than he’s _ever_ wanted anything.

This isn’t him. This is him and Ryan, together.

“Jesus, Ray,” Ryan breathes, somewhere above him. “Fucking _look_ at you. Bent over all patient and waiting for my cock. I fucking _love_ it.”

The embarrassment is back, but this time it’s mostly because Ray feels his cock _jerk_ , Christ, he’s in so deep even Ryan’s dirty talk is getting to him. “Fuck you,” he growls, mostly for appearances. 

“Now what did I say about attitude?” Ryan murmurs, sweet as can be, sliding a finger into Ray as casually as you would change gears on a car. Ray gasps, backing into it, before he relaxes and takes it. Likes it, even.

“Good,” Ryan coos his approval, and adds another. The lube is cold, which is the biggest shock of the penetration, but before long Ray finds himself whimpering for it. For more. “I love how easily you loosened up for me. You were built for me.”

“Ryan,” Ray whispers. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Whispering Ryan’s name, breathing it, saying it under his breath. It feels like it’s all he knows how to say anymore. 

“Do you drive, Ray?”

_What?_ “All of us drive, Ryan,” Ray says uncertainly, momentarily forgetting the fingers working him open.

“No, Ray—do you _drive_?” Ray gasps at the third finger, and how _full_ he feels. Ryan leans over him until his cock is nearly laid out on Ray’s back. “Do you know how to take a car out into a field somewhere and take it up to 120 without hitting a single thing? When you’re behind the wheel, is it an extension of yourself, working with you in harmony?”

“N-no,” Ray whimpers. That unusual invasion of Ryan’s digits is now beginning to dull into a pleasant ache, which he tries to chase by riding backwards onto them. “Geoff never—”

“Not even up in San Andreas?” Ryan teases—God, that’s what he’s doing. _Teasing._ “Out where it’s open and empty and no one can tell you slow down? That’s where I learned.”

Ray chokes. “Ryan, please.”

“Please what?”

“ _Enough._ Fuck me, please, oh God—”

“I don’t like that you don’t know how, Ray,” Ryan says, almost gently, and Ray cries out at the sudden absence of Ryan’s fingers. “I don’t like it at all. It teaches control. It disciplines you. I’ll have to show you.”

Then, before Ray yells in frustration (because wasn’t Ryan the one bitching about being forced to wait earlier? Dick), his legs are kicked apart impossibly wider, and Ryan fills him with one fluid thrust.

There’s this beautiful moment where both of them, unfamiliar with the feel of each other, experience it for the first time.

Ray moans out, long and low and _painful_ , turning so his forehead is pressed into the metal. Because it feels so strange, being stretched out like this, so strange and a little uncomfortable and _hot_ , most of all, like the sweetest burn he’s ever known. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t disobeying Ryan for the first time all night and pressing his hands into the Zentorno’s hood just so he doesn’t feel like he’s going to _float away_. 

Then, Ryan follows suit: “Holy _shit_.”

“Yeah,” Ray gasps, in a high voice. “Yeah.”

“Are you—?”

“Yes,” he moans. “I’m so fucking good right now, Ryan.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ryan whispers desperately, pressing his hands into Ray’s hips. That first thrust is slow and experimental, and it hurts, but a lot less than the initial penetration. Ray groans to let Ryan know it’s okay.

As Ryan starts a rhythm—careful at first, then progressively faster, learning Ray’s boundaries—those hands get tighter, until the grip is sure to leave bruises. And Ray kind of loves that, made mindless by their bodies moving together. It doesn’t take long for the discomfort to gradually abate, either, overtaken by a sharp, sweet pressure, the likes of which he’s never known. It puts an unholy strain on his cock, which is pulsing to the point of pain between his legs, and he desperately fucks himself back onto Ryan’s dick, chasing it.

“Fuck, Ray you’re so _good_ ,” Ryan hisses in that same low, scratchy way as before. Ray’s head swims. “Fucking yourself on my cock.”

“Shut up,” Ray croaks. The sound of their skin slapping has grown wetter. Lewder. Just hearing it—hearing _them_ —fills his face with heat all over again.

“Are you close?” Abruptly, Ryan’s voice frays altogether. “You are, aren’t you? You’re _loving_ this.”

Ray lets his throaty moan serve as response, burying his face against his forearms. 

“You wanna come with my cock buried inside of you, Ray?” Ryan hums. “Is that what you want?”

When Ray doesn’t answer, Ryan, the _bastard_ , he starts to slow down. Agonized, Ray moans. “Ryan, Jesus Christ, _please_ —”

“That’s it,” Ryan rasps, harsh. “Beg me for it. Fucking _beg_ me to let you come.”

“ _Go to HELL_ ,” Ray snarls, but this quickly dissolves into a whine when he feels Ryan withdraw completely, leaving him maddeningly empty.

Without meaning to, he whimpers.

Ryan’s voice is a taunt that rings in the canyon around them: “ _Beg._ ”

The sudden heat of tears is prickling at the corners of Ray’s eyes. Humiliated and desperate, he chokes out, “ _Fuck me._ ”

“Uh-uh,” Ryan tuts, sliding his hands up along Ray’s body until one anchors on his throat. Ray tries to gasp, but it can only escape as a wheeze.

Darkly, Ryan whispers, “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

“Ryan,” Ray breathes, “ _enough_. You’ve made your point.” Fruitlessly, he tries to back up again, seeking contact, anything, but the hand around his neck keeps him anchored. “ _Please._ ”

“Tell me how you want it.” Ryan’s breath quickens. “How you want me to fuck you raw.”

“Fuck me raw,” Ray whispers obediently. A tear beads at the corner of his eye. “Fuck me until I scream. Until I can’t even walk straight.”

“Good,” Ryan breathes and then he’s filling Ray, and this time the rhythm is raw and punishing, setting Ray’s every nerve on fire. Jesus, Ryan doesn’t even give him time to _adjust_. It’s so hard and fast the only thing he can do, really, is hold on, and take it.

Ryan’s hand stays pressed on his throat, making the corners of his vision deliciously blur. As they reach a steady, wonderful pace, Ryan leans forward, his heat radiating onto Ray’s back like the sun.

“Tell me you love it,” he growls into Ray’s ear. 

Ray, who wants to be pissed, _furious_ even, because he is not submissive and he is not a bitch—and he sure as fuck isn’t _Ryan’s_ bitch, for that matter—knows right then and there just how utterly fucked he truly is. Because he whispers “I love it”, and it slips out of his mouth as naturally as his own voice. Like it was meant to be.

“Yeah? You love me fucking you over the hood of my car?” Ryan’s fingers are ten hot pinpricks now pushing in on Ray’s waist as they fuck each other in equal measure. Sweat is dripping off of both of them, steaming the air. “You love me going so deep that you’ll be able to feel me every time you take a step tomorrow?”

“For fuck’s sake, Ryan,” Ray cries, “ _yes._ Yes, I love it. I _love_ it.”

“Holy shit.” Ryan sounds so uncomposed then, so _unraveled_ , that Ray can’t even believe it’s him speaking for a second. “Touch yourself. I want to hear you scream my name as you come.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Ray moans. “Your mouth is _filthy_.”

“Can’t help it,” Ryan whispers. “Can’t help it when I’m around you.”

And _oh_ , the breathless desperation in his voice—it’s so new and so beautiful that it has Ray fumbling madly for his cock without a second thought. Ordered to or not, he needs to come to this. _Badly._

When he finally wraps a hand around it, his dick is throbbing harder than he can ever recall. The whole thing is a mess of the most beautiful kind; he’s sweaty, chafed, and his legs are going to be killing him tomorrow, and his cheek has been rubbed completely raw from the hood. But God, it’s so perfect, too and so very _them_. The two of them have always been a disastrous, unclean fit. They weren’t meant to exist together sweetly, or gently, or kindly in any way. They’re fucked up, and the both of the together could only be beautiful in the way a punch to the face is beautiful. They were meant to crash and _burn_.

As Ray helplessly strokes himself, there’s a terrifying moment where they’re not talking, just moving and panting and _being_ , that he thinks that he might actually _love_ Ryan. But the thought is heavy, heavy enough to break this, so he pushes it away. 

“That’s it,” Ryan moans, digging his fingers in hard enough that Ray sees stars. “Oh my _God_ , you’re getting tighter. Fucking _Hell_.”

“ _God_ ,” Ray chokes, and he is _right there_. But then, at the last second, just when he’s about to peak, Ryan changes pace and however hard he was going before pales compared to this, and holy fuck it’s _deep_ , too, sending pleasure-pain searing through Ray like the tail of a firework. 

Ray almost can’t help it—he screams.

“ _Come for me_ ,” Ryan grits out, cutting off Ray’s air completely, and Ray has no choice; he comes, violently, spilling all over his hand with his mouth wrapped around Ryan’s name like a prayer. 

He’s still coming down when that hand around his throat disappears and there’s a slick weight pressing into his back: Ryan’s leaned down, with both of his hands splayed out on the hood beside Ray’s, and takes in a sharp breath as he fucks into Ray with no accord. Even hazy from his orgasm, and shivering with a newfound sensitivity, Ray still can’t help his own satisfaction. Because Ryan dirty talking and being a tease is hot. But _this_ Ryan? The Ryan who’s quiet, and losing it, and thrusting like he doesn’t know how to do anything else? That’s something else. That’s something Ray has never seen before: Ryan, out of control. 

Ryan, completely and utterly _undone_.

The fog in Ray’s brain just manages to lift in time to feel Ryan biting into his shoulder and the heat flooding him a moment later, slipping between his legs and onto the ground. And just when he thinks it can’t get any better, Ryan turns his head into Ray’s neck to let out a beautiful, broken noise that Ray immediately knows will _never_ leave him. Not if he can fucking help it. As Ryan pants and tries to regain his footing, Ray commits it all to memory: Ryan flush to his back, their legs shaking, the thoughtless rhythm of Ryan’s hips before he let go completely, the biting cold of the air on his burning skin. He clenches down on it and vows to never let go.

It’s quiet for a while, with the other sound being their labored breathing and the soft whistle of the wind. Then Ryan drops his lips to Ray’s shoulder and kisses him, over the spot where he’d sunk his teeth not even a moment ago. Ray wants to turn his head to say something, Hell, even just to see Ryan’s face, but there are strong hands wrapping around his waist before he can move, caressing the scars.

They both shudder. 

“Ray,” is all Ryan says, quiet and out of breath. And Ray, he just leans back into him and nods, eyed closed. Because he knows. He knows.

— —

After cleaning up and redressing, they pass out not long after, curled up on the back seats of the Zentorno.

The last thing Ray remembers before falling asleep is Ryan, smiling sleepily and kissing him on the forehead, so of course, he sleeps like a rock—even after the Sun comes up. Ryan had said, “So I’m guessing we’re together now,” and Ray just laughed, feeling lighter than he had in years.

Everything is perfect, until it isn’t.

— —

He wakes up just as his phone vibrates with the last bit of an incoming call.

He’s blearily feeling around for it as Ryan climbs back in, hair looking a little whipped by the wind. He looks amazing, as usual, and they’re _together_ now, so Ray wants to say good morning, or to kiss him, or _something_ , but the damn phone is taking about five seconds of breathing room between calls. Meaning it’s probably Geoff, paranoid and frantic after finding both of them missing this morning (it’s not like Ray made a U-turn out to the pool first to tell Geoff he was off to get railed). 

Hearing it, Ryan sends Ray a sympathetic smile. “God, you’re cute,” Ray says, as the phone starts its sixth call.

Ryan chuckles. “You gonna get that?”

“Ugh.” It’s beneath one of the floor mats, where it likely slipped after he shucked his pants off. With a sigh, he scoops it up to look at the screen.

It’s Burnie.

“Oh boy,” Ryan says. 

Rolling his eyes, Ray puts it on speaker. “Yeah—”

“Where the _fuck_ are you?”

Ray purses his lips, shooting Ryan a look. All this because Daddy Geoff didn’t know where they were for a few hours? Fuck.

“Ryan and I went for a late night joyride. We passed out in his car, near the reservoir. Why?”

Burnie doesn’t reply immediately, but the muffled talking on the other line says he’s reporting that to someone. Then he says, “Geoff’s pissed.”

Ryan snorts. “No shit,” Ray says, rolling his eyes.

“Stop laughing, shithead. This is serious,” Burnie snaps. “Someone put a hit out last night.”

Ray’s heart skips a beat.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Burnie says, “around midnight, and whoever did it must have friends, because word’s traveled. _Fast._ ”

“Jesus,” Ray says, “wha—who? Who did they put the bounty on?”

Burnie pauses, which only heightens Ray’s anxiety. “All of you,” he says grimly. 

Ray stares at the phone, as if he didn’t hear that right and he’s waiting for it to change. But there’s no sound, no rebuke, except for the faint sound of static. Ryan has a furrow in his brow that might actually be worry.

“It’s no chump change, either. Gavin already got jumped.”

“Oh my god,” Ray says, and even Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Is he _okay_?”

“He’s fine, just a little roughed up. We have no idea who did it, either, but it’s huge. Geoff wants everyone at the safe house within the house.”

The safe house. The one near Chilead, that Geoff bought for “emergencies”. Ray closes his eyes and grips his phone, nearly knocked unconscious by the mood whiplash.

This is not how this morning was supposed to go. They were supposed to go get coffee, or bagels, or breakfast, then head back to one of their apartments. They were supposed to take a walk on the beach, or take a long drive through the hills. They were supposed to have a _break_.

“Is Ryan still with you?” Burnie asks. “His phone’s going straight to voicemail, so I think it’s dead..”

Ray slides his eyes toward the man in question, who’s quietly looking away. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s with me.”

_He’s with me_ , which should be thrilling and new and exotic on Ray’s tongue after last night. But instead, it falls out like a stone.

“Good. Both of you haul ass, and for the love of _fuck_ , make sure you’re not followed. Geoff says to kill anybody you think might kill you first, if you have to. He’s not taking chances.”

“All of this and the hit’s not even nine hours old?” Ray mentally shuffles through their known enemies: the Aztecas, before Ortega abandoned them and left them in disorganized tatters. The Lost MC, before Trevor Philips blew their trailer park to the high heavens. Michael De Santa and Lester Crest, or so Geoff’s assumed, since they haven’t returned any of the Crew’s calls since Ryan killed Trevor. But the thought of _any_ of them putting out a citywide bounty like this—and on the _entire_ Crew, no less—sounds like something out of fiction.

But then who?

“Yeah.” Burnie sounds bitter. “They have some pull to them. Looks like this city might not be ours for much longer.”

“Don’t say that, Burnie,” Ray mutters, but all he’s thinking about is what Ryan said last night: how there might some day come a problem too big for them to handle. How they might not be strong enough.

All Burnie does before he hangs up is let out a tired, quiet laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With all of that ridiculous UST out of the way, things are really going to start kicking off! Let me know what you guys thought, as well as any suggestions you have for the Crew's future (I have a plan that's flexible with details, so I'm TOTALLY willing to fit in your suggestions).
> 
> The next installment will be published as a whole new story in the next two weeks or so. Cheers!


End file.
